Quick update

First of all I just looked over at my baby counter and about freaked out about close we are getting here. Then I realized that it is set to my due date and not my scheduled date so I'm actually closer than that...............and then I really started to panic. LOL!

We made it out to Utah safely! Conal is back in Illinois now so keep your fingers crossed that this little one doesn't decide to make an early appearance. As long as everything is ok at my ultrasound on Thursday, we will go ahead as scheduled and have her on July 1st. Let's hope I don't get bumped twice this time.

Alexia has been doing a lot better. YAY! I still feel a little uneasy about the whole situation since we've had a year's worth of set backs, but I'm so grateful that things are going well with her right now.

The day after we arrived in Utah we were able to go to dinner with Conal's sister Lorena, his brother Clark and his wife Cori, and 3 of their 5 kids, Carl, Corbin and Cheryl. We don't get to see them very often since none of us live near each other. I was so glad Conal got to see them. He was so happy!

The kids and I are in 7th heaven because we are in walking distance from my sister's house. It's so awesome! My sister on the other hand is probably ready to lock the doors, close the blinds and threaten her kids not to make any noise so she can pretend like she isn't home. Can't say I blame her. 9 kids under 9 years old in one house can be kind of crazy!

For the next little while we will be enjoying being around family and friends, preparing for the baby and praying for a safe birth for baby and mommy.

The not-so-surprise, surprise baby shower

As my grandma always says "What to do? What to do?".

I found myself asking this question Monday evening when I came across an email in my inbox that was SO obviously not meant for my eyes. Come to find out the young women were planning a surprise baby shower for Kayla and me.

So now that I know, and I'm not supposed to know, what do I do? And do they know that I know? hmmm. Quite the dilemma.

I noticed that Kayla got the email as well so I called her and we decided that we would just play along. Our husbands were supposed to make us late to YW so they could set up. Conal was relieved that he didn't have to think up some way to make me late and then have me irritated with him. ha ha!

Well, come to find out, Heather figured out her email mistake about an hour after she sent it and she and Jerriann decided that they wouldn't call our attention to it, play along and see what happened.

So Kayla and I showed up late as planned, wondering if the email mistake had been discovered and if we were still supposed to play along. Heather and Jerriann set everything up as planned and wondered if we knew, that they knew, that we knew.

We sure have been getting a good laugh out of this one!

We had such a fun time at the shower. Jerriann and Heather are so much fun!

I was even a good sport to drink apple juice out of a baby bottle.

Darn it all, I LOST too.

Glad the YW were all busy with their own bottles or I guarantee a picture of this would've ended up on facebook within hours.

I actually won one of the games. I know. Amazing. I never win baby shower games........but I was only 7 jellybeans off when guessing how many jellybeans are in the baby bottle.

How many would you guess? huh? huh?

This was real crowd pleaser at home as well........I could barely get a picture of it before it was snatched.

Thanks for the cute baby stuff ladies! It's exactly what I need and in the colors I love.

Thank you so much for a fun night, and for thinking of me! I really appreciate it!

7th Heaven

May 14, 2003 :

May 14, 2010 7:41am (the time of Hailey's birth):

I sure love having a 7 year old girl around the house.

She loves to help and play with the younger two kids.

Her newest form of entertainment is to teach Macy funny things to say, like "I'm MAD!" or "GG did it" or "Jacky is a bad boy", and "Macy is a good girl".

Conal and the boys went to the Fathers and Sons campout the night of Hailey's birthday. I could tell she was disappointed that they would be gone so I asked her if she wanted to have them stay for her birthday and she said "NO! Garrison would be SO disappointed. He looks forward to Fathers and Sons all year long!"

So instead, we girls headed off to Chili's for some yummy food and a lot of fun.

Hailey loved the waiters singing "Happy Birthday" to her and the Molten Lava cake didn't hurt either.

We had our own sleep over too.

Then she decided that it was pretty cool that the boys went to the campout because she got to have another birthday party the next day when they got back.

Happy 7th birthday Hailey!

Iron Chef

I'd love to take credit for the young women winning the "Iron Chef" competition but hey......you'd all know that it was a lie! All of my good recipes come from my aunt "Debbie Crocker" and my other aunt "Becky Crocker"...........and then there is good ole Betty Crocker. LOL!

The young women did all of their baking at my house. The not-so-secret ingredient was lemon (we had to know ahead of time to make sure that we had all of the ingredients). While we leaders sat around watching,

or taking pictures (um yeah, there is a reason that I am avoiding cameras while 7 months pregnant.......)

the young women whipped up some wonderful lemon bars, a lemon meringue pie, with some strawberry lemonade to wash it down.

Heather and JeriAnn even found this darling plate for the presentation.

Too bad I didn't take a better photo of the final presentation.

The young women had some hard competition though. The young men made a lemon cheesecake and a lemon slushy, both of which from what I hear, were very tasty.

Hope the Little's house is still in one piece after the YW and YM met their to try out their goodies.

Oh BTW, the young men want to challenge us again...........but next time, they insist that we have to cook meat! ha ha!

The Past in Plainfield

Conal loves family history.

He reads out of a thick green book about his mother's side of the family nearly every Sunday.

He seems to find relatives everywhere we go.

In El Paso, he figured out that he was related to a friend of ours in the ward. Ok really, he's distantly related to a lot of people in that ward but this one we didn't know about. Here in Illinois, he's figured out that he is related to our Stake president.

Since we've moved here, Conal has found (in that thick green book) that his great great grandfather used to live here in Plainfield. I posted about this around Thanksgiving time. Pretty interesting since we had never heard of Plainfield until we got our orders to move out here. Conal was interested to know more so he started to inquire how he could get another book about this side of the family. We call this book, the big black book. We didn't have any luck getting a copy of it.

However, Conal had borrowed a copy of the big black book from Ellen, our friend/Conal's relative in El Paso and wondered if she could get a hold of a copy. I don't know if I have all of the details correct, but sure enough, Ellen's parents got a hold of a copy that some distant relative found in Grand Cayman. We now have that book in our possession.

I can't tell you how bad I feel that people went to that much trouble to get us a copy of the book. However, we are so grateful and Conal has been like a kid in a candy store.

Since receiving the book, we found out that not only did Conal's great great grandfather live here, but his great great great grandfather was actually one of the founders of Plainfield. Here we are living in a city that Conal's great great great grandfather helped settle and we didn't even know it!

We are trying to find exactly where his farm was but this area is our closest guess for now.

Conal's GGG grandfather was also baptized right here in Plainfield in the Dupage river.

On April 12, 2010 we had our Family Home Evening on the banks of the Dupage river 175 years to the day that Timothy Baldwin Clark was baptized in that very river.

Easter Sunday

General Conference Sunday and Easter on the same day............it's like Christmas!!! er Easter. Whatever.

Anyway, what is better that listening to General Conference, staying in your p.j.'s all day, and spending the whole day together as a family?

Ya gotta start off with an Easter egg hunt. We told the kids to find a certain color of egg and it worked rather well. I was surprised. No one cried or took anyone out. That a good sign for sure.

You've got to color Easter Eggs. It sure seemed to go more smoothly this year than last. Maybe because our kids are getting older and no one was walking on the counter while we were coloring the eggs. Just a thought.

The girls got some card games in their Easter baskets. One of those games was "Old Maid" which is a Burton family favorite, or maybe unfavorite depending on who ends up with the old maid. I about fell of my chair laughing when I saw who the old maid was:

I better not explain why I think this is so funny, unless I want to burn in you-know-where.

In hopes of keeping the beautiful 80 degree weather around, the kids each got a pair of sunglasses. I sure hope we aren't tempting mother nature.

The kids had a blast making Easter basket cupcakes.

I'd offer you one but there was an awful lot of extra-curricular knife licking going on.

Oh yeah, and since we stayed in our pj's ALL DAY ( I know you are shocked. That is SO atypical for me!) we wore our spring dresses this week.

New York Trip part 2

You can't drive clear out to Palymra, and not go to Niagara Falls. However, we were pretty lucky that we were able to go as we had been up the whole night prior with puking kids. Seriously, it was like someone set an alarm because they (Garrison, Hailey and Jackson) would throw up every 15 minutes like clock-work. Sorry, I know that's too much information, but I've gotta keep it real. It's gotta be written down for posterity! LOL!

It was a chilly day, but not too chilly to walk around and look at the falls.

I'm glad that we got the chance to go and that the kids felt well enough.

Our next stop was Fort Niagara. This military fort has been controlled by Canada, France and the U.S. at different times. It's was built back in the early 1800's. I would love to spend more time there.

We also saw Lake Ontario. This is the 3rd of the 5 great lakes that we have seen since we moved here.

It was a clear day and we could see Toronto, Canada off in the distance.

While we were in the area, we decided to check out a little family history. Conal has some ancestors that are buried in the city of Eden. We weren't certain where the cemetary was but we were able to find it and visit some graves.

The moral of this story is: You can't let a little projectile vomitting (OK fine. A LOT) get in your way.