And our baby is...

A cute baby girl!!!

During the ultrasound today, our little princess was very ladylike. Although it irked the sonographer pretty badly, she kept her legs crossed so that it was hard to find out the gender. We're glad that she already has manners. :)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to all! I have to say that I'm a fan of Halloween, but not the creepy, spooky Halloween. Ours started out with a pumpkin. Steve thinks its funny how excited I get about the pumpkins when they first start selling them at grocery stores in the beginning of October. But I love it and its just fun to get excited about things.

Josh liked it too!
We have decided that every October that I'm pregnant, this will be our design. Emily said that she was having a hard time getting any sort of reaction from her kids about Halloween things until they saw our pumpkin. The reaction? "Eww".

We were also happy that our neighbor's dog didn't eat up all of the entrails.

Our costumes this year were the 3 Musketeers. I finished making the little tunics a few days before our party and was quite pleased with them! I think the little French mustache looks best on Joshua. What do you think? Oh, and Josh wasn't supposed to have a sword, but he always managed to get one.

On Saturday the 30th, we held our Halloween party. We were pleased that the Gibbons kids weren't sick like last year. The costumes were lots of fun! Matt came as a superhero, Emily was a Frazzled Fairy (she has a little wand in her pocket), Lia: the Frog Princess, Quinn: Lightening McQueen, Mikayla was a character from Winnie the Pooh (but I don't know the character's name, sorry!) and Mr Colin came as a pumpkin.

I was sad to miss a picture of all of the Mosbackers and mom and dad Monson, but here is our little pumpkin patch: Colin Gibbons and Nathan Mosbacker.
Mike and Elise came as Frankenstein and his bride. I've got to say that her hair was AWESOME! Shauna and Mom as witches

My brother, Scott, brought a friend of ours from Ohio: J'neen. They came as Life pieces, including the car and little seats in the back for babies.....

We were quite surprised when Jon Updike showed up with Alisha. He's currently working in Washinton DC, so we were a little shocked that he was here!

When Joseph and Greg walked in, Alisha's first thought was "Who is Joseph's ugly ugly date?"

Greg also shocked us, but in a different manner. He came complete with heels.

Four of the Elms 214 roommates: Joseph Sowa, Greg Sorensen, Steve Monson and Jonathan Updike.

Probably my favorite costumes of the night go to Camille and Jason Millar. They brought little Lincoln who was almost 3 weeks old and they were a ref, the football player and the football. SO cute!

Besides stuffing himself with lots of yummy food, Joshua loved the clean-up stage. We pulled down all the streamers and let him run around the apartment with them.
Okay, so we try not to brag about our food, but our pumpkin soup turned out amazing again this year. So for anyone who wants a new Halloween tradition, this is what I suggest you make:

Bachelor's Creamy Pumpkin Soup

1 10.75 oz can condensed cream of potato soup

1 1/4 cup water

1 15 oz can pumpkin puree

2 Tbsp butter

1 cup cream

1 tsp salt, or to taste

1/4 tsp ground black pepper, or to taste

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp ginger

1 pinch paprika, for garnish (I don't think we used this either year)

1 cup seasoned croutons (I don't think we used this either)

Directions:

1) In saucepan over medium heat, combine the cream of potato soup, water, pumpkin, butter and cream. Season with salt, pepper, garlic and ginger. Stir until blended, and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes.

2) Remove from heat and pour into a tureen. Garnish with paprika and croutons.

Its SO easy and very tasty!

Anyway, we hope you all enjoyed your holidays and we're definitely looking forward to Thanksgiving!

Baby Comparisons

For my own entertainment, I wanted to compare pregnancies. This first picture was taken at about 14 weeks when I was pregnant with Joshua. We are now at 15.5 weeks for baby #2 and I thought I would log it. Here we are!

Lets see which baby I get bigger for!

Go Cougars!

So our BYU homecoming game was this last weekend and even though Steve had to work, Joshua and I watched the game together. When we were scoring, I put my arms in the air and yelled "Go Cougars!" Well Joshua, who is in the stage of copying the things that we do, put his arms up, waved them around and started yelling. Although this video is not during the actual game, we got him to do it again for the camera. Its pretty cute.

We've also tried to deck him out in BYU garb. Unfortunately, Josh won't keep hats on and the little BYU Cougar shirts are just too expensive, mostly because he'll grow out of it WAY too fast! But here is how we are making do:

Two down, one to go!

So apparently, my blog posts have been coming in 2s.

Last night, after 45 hours that went into Joshua's Christmas stocking, it is finally done! I'm quite pleased with it and I don't remember any real mishaps with this one.

I quite like it and I'm excited to start Steve's stocking!

Brady loves Burger Supreme...and we're fans too!

This weekend, our brother-in-law, Brady Edwards, was in town for a short time for work. Karen let us know in advance so that we could meet up with him, even if it was only for a short time. The choice of place was Burger Supreme and we all got to enjoy some burgers and fries.

Mikayla, Quinn and Lia
Brady, Scott and Steve

Instead of eating her fries, Mikayla was stacking them all upright in her sauce cup.

Although we definitely missed having Karen and Zachary here as well, it was nice to be able to catch up with Brady.

An addition to the last post

What should I call this post about August?

Alright, since I owe you for about a month, here goes:

Our Joshua sure loves his daddy! Since he's not much of a cuddler, we have to take advantage of the situations in which he does cuddle!

Our biggest news by far for the month is that we are expecting baby #2! We are so thrilled! Several people have asked us which gender we would prefer. Honestly, we'd be perfectly happy with either. If its a boy, Joshua will have a little boy to wrestle with (eventually...) and if its a girl, we'll get to go through a whole new set of experiences!
Joshua LOVES his books! Of course, he loves to eat them some of the time, so we have to keep an eye on him.

Right around our anniversary, Joshua had a fever for several days. When it finally broke, he had this nasty nasty rash. Because we were worried ab0ut what it was, we took him in and found out that it was pretty common for kids whose fevers break to get a rash all over their bodies. Good thing he was happy because he looked awful!

For our anniversary, Steve and Joshua were both pretty sick. We did get to celebrate by going out to dinner though! I am so happy to be married to this wonderful, wondeful man! Happy 2 years of marriage! My gift to him was a candle of his favorite scent: a flower from Tahiti called the Tiare Tahiti. It smells very nice! He surprised me with flowers and chocolate after I came home from my Primary activity.

Joshua got his first haircut. His cute little hairs were starting to fall into his eyes, so it was time. Steve likes this picture because we have the same expression.

I think it turned out rather well!

Bath time! Its definitely his favorite!

My brother Scott came home from his mission to Brazil. It was fun to have him around for a few days. He made friends with Joshua very quickly!

Joshua has had a recent obsession with bikes. He really loves to walk them around, even if he never gets on them.

2 more things:

--We moved apartments on the 21st. We are happily settling into the manager's apartment which is HUGE! We have 3 bedrooms and lots of extra space! Joshua has really been enjoying the roaming room. He first starting taking small steps in the end of July, but he realized that he like it so much that he wanted to do more. He is now a very proficient walker!

--Last but not least: Steve was hired as an intern for Nestle/Stauffers! It really is a tremendous position and its a company that would really like to keep him on after he graduates! I'm so proud of him! So many people applied, but they hired him! We feel very blessed! I'm grateful that Heavenly Father is looking out for us and taking care of our needs!

Pasta and Parties

Several weeks ago, we fed Joshua pasta for the first time. We were delighted to find that he very rapidly figured out how to suck the noodles completely into his mouth! He was such a mess, but it was so cute!

Josh has been such a great kid lately! He is just so full of smiles and even though he gets a good amount of bonks on his head from learning to walk, he gets up and grins again!

My cousin, Karen Adams, was sealed in the temple this week to Matt McNeff. They are adorable together and both look so happy! Here are some pictures I took:

I was told that Brother McNeff was one of dad's mission buddies! Cool!

Emily and Colin
Sherie and Katherine

Emilie and her sweet little girls!

Parents of 6

No, we're not having quintuplets...

On Wednesday, Steve and I thought we would surprise Emily on her birthday and take three of her children to the park so that she could get some things done. On the way there, we discovered that with 6 kids from 3 different families (Gibbons, Tadeos and Monsons) we had 6 different ages: Robbie age 6, Lia age 5, Quinn age 4, Noe age 3, Mikayla age 2, and Joshua age 1! We had a grand old time getting them all on the 6 swings at the park and counting heads frequently! We felt like we were parents of 6 kids!

Our 1-year-old!

We had Joshua's 1-year-old pictures taken July 1st. Here are our favorites!