Michelle at the Big Kid Park

The good news is there is a park close enough for me to walk to. The bad news is, it's an elementary school park, so all the toys are for bigger kids. No swings for Michelle, really the slides are too tall for her too. But we still go about once a week and she still has a roaring good time.

As a family we have also been frequenting the River Parkway. It is beautiful down there by the river and we enjoy the trails. Michelle likes the grass. I wish we had a yard for her to play in every day, but it will come in time . . .

Jim's new company provides a "wellness coach" for its employees and he told her he would be going hiking once a week. So far we have hit two weeks in a row, hopefully we can keep that up. We discovered Kelly Canyon last weekend and it was beautiful. It is also ATV central, but there were some trails for hikers too.

My two little girls are so sweet!

They grow so fast!

Lena is already holding her head up straight and trying to roll herself over. She is getting so big too! She has outgrown her newborn clothes and diapers. She is in her hand-me-down cloth diapers now (and going through them rather quickly). Instead of washing diapers every 3 days now we have to wash them every two! But that's okay, because she is so darn cute. She can even wear bows in her hair, something Michelle STILL can't do. She had one in in the picture here, for church, but this is the end of the day and the bow has come out. (I think with some help from Michelle). Her church dress, by the way, was an ordeal to find. We went all over town, to all the stores, Kohls, Target, Sears, JCPenney, Ross, even Gymboree, and none of them had a dress with sleeves in the 3 month size. Finally we found this one at Macy's.

Swimming Lessons

Michelle started swimming lessons this month. She is not exactly "a fish to water," but things are going "swimmingly". Jim gets to swim with her while I watch from the observation deck with Lena. It makes for pretty lousy pictures, so the only good ones I have are from the first day before they tracked me down and made me go upstairs, and they aren't really that great. Still . . .

Sisters

We took the two girls to the zoo, and while Lena mostly slept and didn't have a clue where she was, Michelle had a fabulous time and really enjoyed looking at and playing with the animals. (And she discovered how disgusting the food is they let you feed them at the zoo, because she thought it was for her to eat too!)

Michelle loves her sister! Now that doesn't mean she knows exactly how to SHOW her she loves her, because sometimes she is very rough when she gets excited, and she usually gets excited to see Lena. However, sometimes she does it right, and it is pretty cute!

Getting Settled

We are starting to get settled into an apartment in Idaho Falls. It is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom with vaulted ceilings. It has less storage than our house, so we are storing some things until we buy a house here. We are still hopeful that we will be able to sell the house in Show Low this summer! Anyway, as we have been getting settled I have neglected a few things, like phone calls and mail and blog updates. Having TWO babies has contributed, and not getting more than 3 hours of sleep at a time also has something to do with it I suppose. They keep us busy, but they are sweet and we love them very much. I will share a few more photos with you all. Most of them were taken with my phone as it was easily accessible.

Michelle played with old toys in her new room as we unpacked (as you can see, so did Jim!)

Lena enjoyed her new crib.

Michelle had a good time driving the "truck" when we went to Toys R Us to buy Lena's crib. I had to work hard to keep Jim from buying more toys we don't have room for!

Michelle got VERY tired during the long trip from Show Low to Idaho Falls.

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Welcome Lena Mae!

Thursday night I woke up around midnight with a pretty painful contraction. By 3:00 they were coming 5 minutes apart and I knew we had to get to the hospital. We called our friend Miss Tee to watch Michelle, dropped her off and headed in. By the time we were checked in the contractions were 3 minutes apart and I was dilated to a 6. Unfortunately the baby was transverse. They called the doctor and gave me a shot of something in my arm to slow down the labor. It slowed alright. It basically stopped! By the time the doctor came in, my contractions were 30 minutes apart! The good news was, with the slowing of labor, the baby was able to move into the correct position on her own--that was good news, since I was not looking forward to a c-section. Once she was in a good position they put me on other drugs to get labor going again, then I got the epidural (which was 100% better than my last one, by they way). Then we waited for her to come. Near the end there was one more complication . . . she didn't seem to want to drop down all the way. With some serious pushing and some help from the "vacuum" though, she finally came, healthy and beautiful, at 1:36 pm on Friday, April 23. She weighed 8 lbs 10 oz and was 22 inches long. We named her Lena Mae Jackson.

Michelle spent some quality time with Grandma Moore, and got to pose for a lot of pictures! We couldn't have made it through this weekend without my mom's help! We are still enjoying the pre-made dinners Mom, thanks!

We brought Lena home Saturday afternoon and Michelle loved her!

Easter

We had a really fun Easter with Michelle this year and I thought I would share some of the pictures with you (the few of you there are out there).

These are from Friday before Easter, at the park.

Sunday afternoon Easter Egg Hunt in the backyard (ignore the growing pile of "stuff" getting ready to be loaded up for our big move)

Easter morning with her Easter "basket". It's a hat too--an idea from Jim's childhood that I thought was both practical AND adorable!

Her favorite part was hitting the plastic eggs together, and opening and closing them too.

She dumped the grass out so she could put on the hat.

Reading the Tale of Peter Rabbit.

Dying Easter Eggs Saturday night--this was the best part. She LOVED it!