Saturday, December 2, 2017

Are you Serious?

Let's be honest, I'm not very good at this blogging thing. BUT alas, I am here and ready to give you the biggest update yet. As it has been a year and a half.... whoops. So embarrassing. I started a post awhile ago and decided to just delete it and start over because I had no idea what I was in the middle of writing hah!

Well, the biggest news first. BENSON MICHAEL FLAKE was BORN! Baby #2 at 7 lbs 4 oz and 20.5 inches long in Peoria, AZ at Arrowhead hospital. Brayden had to be out to Ohio for dental school orientation on August 11th and I was due on August 9th, so we decided a VBAC wasn't the best option this time around and scheduled my second C-section on August 2nd. My oh my am I glad we made that choice! I don't know if I could have carried that little man any longer! Everything went as planned that day, and Kirsten took great care of Amelia while we were in the hospital. We blessed Benson at 6 days old in Kirsten's home and he was swimming in his Daddy's blessing outfit.






The next announcement (that everyone already knows since it's been over a year) is that we MOVED TO COLUMBUS, OHIO! Brayden is now finishing up his first semester of 2nd year and we are absolutely in love with this place! I am amazed by the amount of family friendly activities and events here. On a typical weekend, I have 3-4 things that I try to fit in, but the kids have so much fun that we usually only get to 1 or 2 of them. We also love the farms, seasons, parks and the fact that we can have a garden... WHAT?! So fun.





I guess I will just do a little update on each of us and hopefully pick up where I left off with recording our adventures....

Brayden is now 28, is about to finish a 27 credit hour semester and then take his board exams, is the Scout Master over 2 wards as well as the YM's Secretary, and still finding a ton of time for us somehow. He made a decision to get through dental school without worrying about getting straight A's and I have never been so grateful! He has had a lot of time to spend with us and I know the kids are happy about that decision as well. He is still obsessed with fishing ;) and has really come to love fly tying.

I am now 27, a stay at home Mama, a LipSense distributor, a nursery music leader (best calling in the world) as well as a member of the RS activities committee, a babysitter, a board member of 614 Moms and have taken up running as a hobby. I ran my first actual race since running the Ragnar and was surprised by my determination to make a certain time. It was nice to have something to work towards and to feel accomplished. It was a 10 mile race and I ran it in 1:34:00 which was 6 mins under my goal. I am signed up for a half marathon next! We get to watch a little girl named Ruth 3-4 days a week and we love having her around! I try to keep the kids busy each day and often fall short of being a good Mom, but the kids are alive at the end of the day and that's what matters! :)

Amelia is now 3 years old and asked for a pink pineapple (often called apple-pine) party for her 3rd birthday. She goes to preschool 3 days a week, has come to love singing and dancing, loves to use her imagination, is very social, likes to be the leader and has SO much personality. When this little girl puts her mind to something, it WILL happen. She can write her name and loves asking me how words are spelled. She is nice to her brother 70% of the time and nice to Ruth 100% of the time. Her best friends are Everett and Killian and she always chooses to play with boys over girls. She is just barely getting into the girly phase and has asked for a pink scooter, a pink watch and pink shiny shoes for Christmas. She decided 3 weeks ago that she wanted to get her ears pierced (again) and we didn't think she would go through with it... boy were we wrong! She had her little mind set on that. She finally got rid of her Paci completely, decided to wear panties and is doing chores daily to save up for a guitar she wants. She sure keeps us laughing, smiling and crying.







Benson is 16 months old today and is quite the BOY. He loves to destroy things, wrestles or tackles anyone on the ground, could live on the front porch watching cars, and climbs on anything he can walk up to. He has fallen off of the table, a chair and out the back door... in the last 2 weeks. He is definitely going to be the cause of my gray hairs. He is obsessed with animals, loves to go fishing with Dad and dances any time he hears a tune. He followed his sister's footsteps by walking at 13 months and his first word was Dada. He has a forced laugh that kills us all and smiles on command. This kid is going to be an exhausting toddler!







Ellie is now 7 and is still Ellie just a little slower.

We moved out here into a 2 bedroom place and lived there for 8 months until we decided to find a 3 bedroom place in hopes that Benson would sleep. One of the best decisions of my life! We moved about 800 feet down the road haha sound familiar?

We have developed so many great relationships out here and we love being surrounded by other students who are in the same boat as us. These friendships will be forever cherished! It's been nice to be able to have time together as our own little family, but we do miss being so close to everyone!

We have visited Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, West Virginia and multiple camping locations so far and can't wait to explore more!

Until next time! Hopefully not another year and a half ;)













Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Memorial Day Weekend

We were so happy to find out that Brayden had Memorial Day off from work as he had assumed he didn't. We fit in everything we could in the short 3 day weekend and it was a blast!

On Friday he came home a little early and we headed up to Horsethief Basin to camp. It really isn't too far away, but the rough dirt road to get there makes it about 2.5 hours. We got up there early evening, set up camp, explored with Amelia, made tin foil dinners, cooked some peach cobbler in the dutch oven while Kirsten and her family made s'mores, found out our air mattress had another hole eek!, and then sat around the fire. Amelia was exhausted and slept like a rock while Brayden and I found ourselves laying on the ground after 2 hours of the air mattress staying pumped up haha. I ended up grabbing all the beach towels from the car and stacking them up under my hips and Brayden stuffed part of his sleeping bag under himself. We eventually fell back to sleep and made it the rest of the night. Whoo hoo! We will always bring one of our back up air mattresses from here on out! Lesson learned. 

In the morning, we built another fire, ate some breakfast, packed up camp and headed to Horsethief Lake. It wasn't really big, so we brought an inflatable boat and Mark had borrowed a small aluminum boat for fishing. We spent about 5 hours there walking around the lake, fishing, eating lunch, sleeping (Amelia that is), playing in the water, feeding the ducklings, and hanging out. It was a great place to park for the day. We headed out after that and got home in time for dinner and the basketball game.


Amelia loved her new pink chair. She sat down and said "picture?"


Ohh yeah, she found the good stuff!


Bedhead

I love seeing her cousin Trey playing with her because I was just a little bit younger playing with him when he was that age!



The inflatable boat worked pretty well and doubled as a great napping place for Amelia on land!

Catching Bass


On Monday we got up and went for a short hike right by the house here and then ran some errands. After that we headed downtown to the Diamondbacks game. It was... well... not the best game to attend as they lost 8-2, but Amelia had fun cheering and eating fries. She is obsessed with fries for those of you who aren't around her much. Fries, cheese, hot dogs, chicken and cucumbers are always the go to foods. We ran some more errands after the game, including getting a back up air mattress with the memorial day sales ha! Then we finished off the weekend by eating at Mellow Mushroom and watching the Warriors win the series Yay!










This morning we had a 3D ultrasound for the little guy and Amelia watched the screen the whole time saying, "Baby brother, cute!" and "so funny." We didn't get a 3D with her, so it was fun to see him in there! I think Amelia thought it was pretty cool too. We are now at 30 weeks! Only 9 short weeks until we meet this baby! 

Amelia also started swim lessons today and did a great job. She loves being in the water. She loves it so much that when the lessons were over she threw a 45 minute fit haha. She is so smart. When she woke up from her nap she said, "Hi Mom. I crying. I sorry." During lunch I told her she had to apologize if she wanted to go back to lessons tomorrow.  So, we get to go back tomorrow. Wish us luck!


Monday, May 23, 2016

Back Home

I suppose the name of my blog is not exactly relevant right now since we are actually "Stuck in warmer, really hot, excruciating, terrible weather" for the time being. Just teasing. It's really not that bad. The fact that we were able to be out in swim suits and in the sun 2 months earlier than in Utah, made us all pretty happy! I love the Arizona heat, pregnant or not. I'm not sure Ohio will even be able to change this family into the snow loving sort. We'll have to check in on that in about a year.

Since December, we have moved twice and gone on many trips. This month we decided to settle down and keep Amelia "home" for a reset of sleeping and good habits. Poor little girl is so confused about what is going on! She finally seems to be settling in and loves her new big girl bed and room here at Mark and Kirsten's.

January through April we lived in Mesa with Emily and Caleb and had fun playing at the park, having lunch dates with Grandma Frassa, playing with Jonah, feeding lots of ducks, going to the Gilbert Temple and running through the sprinklers.
















In February, Amelia and I went to Utah with Mike, Sozelle, and Shannan. Poor Brayden had to stay behind and work, but don't worry, he got a vacation later! We had lots of fun hanging out with Caitlin and Dallin, going to the Provo City Temple open house, and seeing my old Young Women!

In March, Brayden took a trip with his Dad, Cody, and Dallin to Lee's Ferry for the weekend. They didn't have as much success as they would have liked with the fish, but Brayden was happy to finally get there for all of the beautiful scenery! We will go back one day :)




Brayden made it back just in time for Easter Sunday and Amelia's 3rd hunt. She got to hunt for eggs at a fun neighborhood Easter celebration, then at Grandma Frassa's, and finally with just Mom and Dad. She wanted to find eggs every day the following week, but eventually realized it was just an Easter activity.








In April, we got to visit with Alyssa Gardner and her sweet boy Shane (Amelia is obsessed with watching videos of the two of them playing at the mall), made many weekend trips to Tucson, and then we moved in with Mark and Kirsten in Peoria.















As soon as we got all of our things unpacked in Peoria, we took off to Utah for Brayden's graduation. It was a good excuse to get back to Provo one more time before heading back east. The graduation was long, but really good. The Dean of the College of Life Sciences spoke about "living where you are" which was a great reminder to us as we have been hopping around everywhere these past 6 months. I felt like his message was written for our family. We had lots of fun in Utah visiting good friends, spending time with both of our families, and of course, fishing on the Provo.







Straight from Utah, Brayden made his way back to Arizona, and Amelia and I flew to Dallas. Dan and Crystal went to Aruba and needed a sitter, so Amelia and I hung out with the kids for a week! We had a good time jumping on the trampoline, playing at the park, seeing Zootopia, watching Macey at gymnastics, Ryan at Taekwondo, and Alex play the trumpet at his band concert. Amelia had a blast being around her only girl cousin :).  












Since we have been in Arizona, we've made lots of trips down to Tucson, Amelia has spent time away from us with Grandmas and Grandpas, and we had lots of busy days going on adventures. Amelia was starting to get overstimulated and the two year old tantrums were coming out. I can't blame her! We have been having a blast, but it's always a little stressful being away from home and not having a home of our own, so we have been taking it easy this month and the tantrums have been cut down significantly and she has been sleeping and eating so much better! Hallelujah! She has adjusted to her big girl bed in just a month and loves that it's pink.

Amelia is loving having her two older cousins to follow around and we have found a lot of fun things to do on this side of town! Lots of splash pads, library story time, mall play places, her cousin's football games, and she starts swim lessons next week. I love that we have had time with each of our family members here in Arizona. We aren't sure how often we will be able to visit once out in Ohio, so we are soaking it all up!









Oh, and we are having a baby boy!!! I am currently 29 weeks along and he is due August 9th. This pregnancy has come with much more back, tailbone, and hip pain, but I have been feeling just fine. I feel so lucky to only have morning sickness during the first trimester when I hear about the poor women who get stuck with it the entire time! Yikes! I can't even imagine. I have needed more naps with this little guy and I'm sure it's because his big sister wears me out! I recently started exercising more to try to help my back pains and I have been feeling so much better! Zumba, the elliptical, hikes and walks feel so good! I am determined to make it to hiking at 37 weeks like I did with Amelia. Whatever it takes!!!





We also sold both of our cars recently to downgrade/up-size for dental school. Brayden got me my first real Mommy car and we plan to use one car the first year of dental school. We will see how that goes! I have been enjoying the space and I'm sure it will be really nice once we have both car seats in the back.



The clock is ticking and we only have two and a half months until Brayden drives the moving truck out to Ohio! Baby will come August 2nd if he doesn't decide to make his way out before hand, so we are planning on meeting him then! That gives us 9 days with Brayden until he leaves. We are so lucky to have so much help being here in Arizona. I am so grateful for family!