Cookies for Santa

Dear Santa,
Here are some cookies we made for you. I hope you like sprinkles. You might not want to eat the green circle one with the red hots, Carson licked his knife a few times in between spreading the frosting. Plus I think he sucked on one of the red hots and spit it back out on the cookie.
Then again when I told Carson not to give you his germs, Sadie said you're magic so you can't get sick.
Hope you enjoy the cookies as much as the kids enjoyed making them with their friends.
Merry Christmas!
Love,
Marcie

Sadie's ballet sneak-peak

Friday we got to go to Sadie's dance class to watch her perform a couple of the dances they've been working on. At this age it's just cute to see them all dancing around, trying to follow the teacher. Sadie actually takes it very seriously, a little too seriously because we kept having to remind her to smile!

Nate's mom came to watch and I just had to take a picture of how cute Sadie looked with her ballet outfit on with her boots and coat (it was a major storm outside that day.)

Back from the cruise, back to the snow!

We had such a great time on our cruise with Nate's family. First we flew to WA for Thanksgiving & to leave the kids with my parents. Then we flew to Tampa, FL where we left for our cruise. I could go on and on about the fun we had, but here are a few highlights of our trip.

**COZUMEL: Definitely the funnest day of the week. We rented 2 scooters and 2 VW bug convertibles and drove around the island beach-hopping. We spent most of the time at a park where we snorkeled and a few people (not us) swam with dolphins.

**ROATAN: Wow! This island is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, and by far the saddest, most poverty-stricken places I have ever been. School was out for vacation so we had a group of kids following us around town trying to get money. They were cute, but so dirty. We found a great guy to drive us all around the island and see the beach, the LDS church, and the views. He also drove us through the ghetto. I have never experienced anything like this before, it's hard to even explain how I felt. I felt grateful for what I have, but sad that poverty like this exists in the world.

**LATE NIGHT TRICKS with Chantell & Jarem. We stayed up together most nights and one night had the idea to take napkins from the dining deck and tie them together to make a rope to tie shut Tiff & Blake's room. It was hilarious!! We even got the room-service guy to knock and say "room service" to get them to try and open it. We had so much fun that we did the same thing to Christal & Chelsie's room the next morning. **THE FOOD. I should have taken a before and after shot of the belly, but I am positive my belly grew exponentially within the 7 days we were there. Some food memories to cherish: filet mignon steak, salmon, and crab cakes. Not to mention the chocolate melting cake we ate every night! I am trying not to think about the weight gain, it's all for the baby right? :)

** KARAOKE night. Boys sang Boys to Men and the girls sang Shania Twain. We weren't drunk (obviously) but it didn't hurt that 90% of the audience was.

**BELIZE. I didn't get any good pictures because we were too busy snorkeling on the reef. Amazing fish!

It's a.....GIRL?!!?!!

Yep, that's right. I went in for my 20 week ultrasound today and was shocked to find out that it is actually a GIRL!!! I was dying of laughter because I saw with my own eyes what we thought was "boy stuff" in my 16 week ultrasound.... guess not! I still can't get used to the idea, since I have been saying "he" to describe this baby for the last month.

Sadie was really excited to find out the surprising twist, since she has wanted a little sister so bad. I had her read the ultrasound picture where it said "It's a girl" and she started sounding out the "gi" and then looked up at me like, "are you serious?" She was thrilled.

So, here's a couple of cute pictures of our GIRL!

Corn dogs and Jelly fish

At Halloween Nate took the kids to a corn maze for mutual while I was at a girl's night out. The next day Carson couldn't stop talking about the "corn dog" and how fun it was. I finally realized that he meant corn maze, but I thought it was so cute I didn't correct him for a while.
This morning he was reading a book to me and started talking about the jelly fish in the book. Then I realized he was pointing to the jelly beans in the book.
It's moments like this when I temporarily forget his behavior in sacrament on Sunday or his stubborn refusal to take naps lately.

Props to Nate's friends...

...for picking such cute, fun, awesome wives. I know they didn't get together and plan out marrying women who could have so much fun together, but they did a great job!

Last night we had a baby shower for Julie K. at Archibalds restaurant (yummy) and we had the best time! I love that 5 of us are pregnant and ALL having boys!!! Yes, and one is having twin boys, so that will make 6 boys born within 4 months. We had to take a picture of our bumps, lined up from soonest due date to latest (me being the last).

From right to left there's Julie K. (due Jan. 1st), Sheena (due Feb.), Julie L. (due Mar. with twins), Tabitha (due Mar.), and me, due April. SO FUN!

Wedding dress shopping

My best friend Jenn came into town this week from Las Vegas with the sole mission of finding a wedding dress. I got to come along and help, along with her sister Tammy. We had such a fun day running around to several dress shops & she was successful!!! She found the most beautiful dress at the last shop we went to. Here's a picture of the gorgeous bride in "the one." I just love Jenn & am so happy for her.

Then, the next day because we had been so successful we got to go shopping at Gardner Village, which was so much fun. Sadie got to come along & enjoy the girl's day out. I must say Sadie is quite the little shopper!

Halloween week

Sadie's preschool class had a Halloween party on Thursday, the kids looked cute, but Miss Debbie looked the cutest in her Snow White costume! We had a fun little party Friday morning with some friends from the ward, the kids had fun playing and decorating cookies. The moms had fun visiting and eating Maria's yummy homemade food. (at least I did!)

We went over to Nate's parents' house for pizza and trick or treating, and to show them our costumes. Carson was a dragon (if you asked him he was a pink dragon with butterfly wings) and Sadie was a butterfly. I was a bottle of "Prego" spaghetti sauce and Nate was a box of spaghetti noodles. There was a hidden message on my costume:

That's right, I'm prego with meat"balls," a boy that is! We found out this week and thought it would be fun to announce it on the costume. We are so excited for Carson to have a little brother!

The things kids do when you're not looking

I would love to have a hidden video camera watching my kids while I'm out of the room. It's funny to hear the things they say to each other (when I can hear from the other room), and to see what they end up doing while I'm not right there next to them. This week we had a couple of funny ones.
Sadie came to me and said "Mom, I forgot that you told me to never do this." "This" was try to curl her hair with a round brush. She had that brush so tangled in her hair I could not help laughing, until after about 30 minutes of trying to get it out of her hair. Then I stopped laughing. Finally after another 15 minutes or so, I made some progress and quickly got it out.

Another day this week I got out of the shower to find both of the kids pretending to be pregnant. They had stuffed dish towels in their shirts to make their baby bumps. Oh boy!

A very scary weekend!

We had a great weekend, full of fun and scares. Friday night we went to Chantell's husband, Jarem's family's haunted forest in Layton. They are such a fun family and go all out for Halloween, I mean crazy all out! Their back yard is huge and has a forest with a path going through it. So they get the whole family and some friends involved and create a very scary haunted forest! I have to admit I got pretty scared a couple of times. But it was funny to get scared by some creature and then the creature saying, "hi Marcie." Makes it fun trying to figure out who is what.

This is probably the only picture I will ever have of me looking more tan than one of Nate's sisters! Chantell looked great, in a scary way.

Then, Saturday my friend Jenn came from Las Vegas with her fiance, Brady. We went to the BYU vs UNLV game together. It was a scary game, too close for comfort the entire game. But in the end BYU pulled out a win, thank goodness. Nate was getting pretty stressed. It was fun having Jenn to sit by so we could talk wedding talk, love it!

After the game Jenn & I went to Gardener Village for Witches Night Out, so fun! We cackled for coupons, got some great deals, ate great food, and I had a great time planning out Jenn's future in Utah! :)

Food, glorious food

This pregnancy has been interesting because I've had the nausea stuff, oh boy I have. But, then I am also completely OBSESSED with food, but only good food. I have actually found myself watching the Food Network channel for hours at a time, with absolutely no intention of making any of the delicious food they create (not like I could with the ingredients in my fridge, but still). I've also gone through my favorite cookbooks several times, staring at the pictures of the dishes. Nate has gotten tired of me actually rewinding back to commercials I see with food (like the Arby's sub commercial, yum) when I am fastforwarding the commercials during our favorite shows. Here are some of the food items I have actually eaten, and been obsessed with in the last few weeks of :

Stuffed Chicken Marsala from Olive Garden, oh my goodness.... so good. I could have licked the plate, okay I totally did.

Nothing fancy, but I had sweet potato fries from Arctic Circle and holy cow! I couldn't stop thinking about them for days.

Roasted Red Pepper with Feta soup from the Village Bakery at Gardener Village. I think I will have to call and see what day this week they're featuring this soup.

I think it's safe to say...

we're expecting! Okay, I'm the worst secret-keeper in the world, so it's probably not a huge secret to many of you, but I'm 14 weeks pregnant, due April 13th. We're excited to welcome baby #3 into our home!

Call me lazy...

but I LOVE these Mr. Potato Head pumpkin kits! No messy, slimy, pumpkin guts to carve out. Plus the kids can actually help put the pieces on the pumpkins. I might not ever carve a pumpkin again.

The kids even named their pumpkins. So, allow me to introduce Aurora & Matey (like Arrrr matey), the 2 new additions to our family.

Nate has a new brother!

Nate's parents were in Ukraine for almost 4 weeks finalizing the adoption of Ruslan, a 15 year old Ukrainian, who is now Austin Ruslan Milne. Last Thursday they finally came home! Everything went well with the adoption and it has been so fun to have Austin Ruslan finally here with the family. He is a great kid with a great sense of humor. Now he just has to learn English so we can actually get his jokes. And we need to get used to calling him Austin.

Tiffany's Reception

Last night we went to Tiff & Blake's wedding reception at Nate's parents' house. They got married last month but had to wait for Nate's parents to get back from Ukraine. It turned out to be a fun night, with great weather (especially for the end of September!)

All of the pictures I got were before the reception started, but just trust me that there were more than just the Milne family in attendance :)

Oh, and thanks SOOO much T. for doing mine and Sadie's hair!