More Ultrasound Photos!

A lady from my old ward who runs a couple of ultrasound studios in Vegas/Henderson was doing some training today and was looking for pregnant ladies who wanted a free ultrasound session so the new tech could practice. I happily volunteered (how could I pass up a free session to look at my newest baby??) and am thankful that my sister saw the post on Facebook and got me the hookup (there are a couple of downsides to no longer having a Facebook account...but those downsides are extremely minimal). I got my younger sister to watch my kids (THANK YOU AGAIN, BONNIE!) and I was able to go take a look at my baby all alone. It was so fun! I really enjoy ultrasounds..I can't get enough of feeling, hearing, or seeing my babies in the womb. It's what I love about being pregnant. What's even more awesome is that I got a free cd filled with a buttload of pictures of my baby, a dvd with live action of my baby girl moving around, set to music (instrumental Elvis music, made to sound like lullabies - LOVE IT! They gave tons of options, but I chose Elvis music, and I'm glad I did.), and I got 4 black and white printout photos (two 2D and two 3D) and two color 4D printout photos. And again, all of this was FREE! AWESOME!!!!!
So, I thought I'd share just a few of the photos on here, because, well, I'm just so excited that I got to see her today! It makes me that much more excited to have her get here in March!

This is Halloween!

Halloween has come and gone, and the kids loved it! We've been doing different Halloween activities over the past couple of weeks to try to get the most out of this Halloween season, that way Diana feels like she got her fill this year. 

This past Monday night, we decided to go to Glaziers and get some pumpkins so we could do our very first pumpkin carving activity with the kids. They had so much fun! And, they were very proud of their pumpkins. 

Waiting for her pumpkin (don't worry, the kids didn't handle the knives!)

Daniel is so excited! Giving kisses to Diana (and stealing her gummy bears, which are hiding behind her pumpkin).

Getting started..Daniel loved playing with the gooshy insides.

Mommy's helper

Daddy and Diana planning their pumpkin. Diana had a VERY hard time with gutting the pumpkin. She kept asking to wash her hands and use a spoon instead of her hands.

Daddy & Diana are finished!

Daniel spent most of the night walking on the table. He loves being dangerous..

Daniel & Mommy's pumpkin is finished, too!

All lit up!

The next day, Diana and I painted the 3rd pumpkin we had purchased. She had so much fun painting the pumpkin! She loves being creative and was really excited that she was allowed to use mommy's paints. 

Diana wanted a kitty on this pumpkin (she loves animals), so I tried drawing a cat on the front, but it didn't go so well. So, I decided to do Hello Kitty instead (WAY easier), and since I didn't have white paint, I made it black...much more Halloween-y in my opinon, anyway!

Yesterday way Halloween! Diana started the day by wearing her costume to Preschool! She was so excited she got to dress up in her costume...she loves that thing. Then, when Daddy got home, the kids took a nap and we went Trick-or-Treating! We go out by my parents' house every year with my brothers and sisters and their kids to trick-or-treat. There's a huge neighborhood out by them that makes for a great one-stop trick-or-treating experience. We started out Trick-or-Treating with one of my brothers and his little family and one of my sisters and her kids, but soon it was just my sister and her kids and me, Mike, and our kids. The rest of my siblings had arrived at different times and gotten started on their trick-or-treating, so we kind of all did our own thing this year. The kids still had a great time, though! 

Daniel was TOTALLY into the whole trick-or-treating thing, and he got the concept right off the bat! He was so brave and followed the other kids up the each door, sometimes running up to the doors before the other kids could get there. He bailed a few times though because his bucket got to heavy and he was running too fast. He was SO talkative, too! He was chatting up every person who opened the door, and was so happy that all these nice strangers were handing him candy. A couple of the houses had dogs, and at those homes we had to pull him away screaming after a few minutes because he wanted to do nothing but sit and play with the dogs. After about an hour, he got a bit burnt out and just wanted to do his own thing, though he was happy and having fun every minute of it! 

Diana had a BLAST! She's been waiting for this moment for MONTHS (literally), and she was going faster than we could keep up with her. More times than I can count, I had to shout to her to slow down and wait for Daniel (who, like I said, kept falling). She'd get really frustrated that she had to stop and wait, but had so much fun, nonetheless. Some of the houses were decorated pretty scarily, but she was really brave..most likely driven by her serious want for some candy. Daniel was really brave, too. Their love of candy conquers all. Diana also loved trick-or-treating with a couple of her cousins and got so burned out that after almost an hour and a half she told Mike, "It's time to go home." So, we packed up and headed home with two VERY tired, but VERY happy kids.

Halloween this year was definitely a success!

I didn't think to take any pictures until we got to our 3rd-to-last house of the night, so I asked the kids to snap a quick picture for me. That's my sister photo-bombing in the background.

The kid with the glowing eyes, to the far right, is my sister's boy. He was dressed as Albert Einstein and TOTALLY fit the part! 

One last house! Daniel was so excited that he ran up to the door without his bucket (which, he had barely let go of all night)

I asked Diana if she wanted to take a picture, and she immediately squatted down and posed all pretty. Mike and I shortly after figured out she kept posing like this because the Princesses at Disneyland had squat down to pose with her when we went earlier this year. She's a funny girl, for sure!

Daniel was WIPED OUT! He slept most of the way home, he slept through being taken inside the house and laid on the couch, he slept through Mike's several loud attempts to wake him up, and he slept through me taking him upstairs to shower, talking with him the whole way up about showering (his favorite thing to do!). 

I had Mike take a picture of him sleeping because it was so funny that he was so out of it! After about 5 more minutes of talking with him and eventually just removing his clothes, he woke up and took a tired, semi-happy, semi-tired shower with Diana. 

They both definitely had a good night!

Pre-Halloween Fun!

Since Diana loves Halloween so much, and has been begging since the day after Halloween last year to go trick-or-treating again (I'm not joking...she's seriously been begging to go ever since), we decided to load her and Daniel up on as much Halloween-fun and Trick-or-Treating as we could handle. So, last night we took the kids out to Springs Preserve for the Halloween festivities they were having out there. They've got trick-or-treating, games, lots of food booths, a small petting zoo, a hay bale maze, and a vocal band. It was fun! The kids had a great time and got some candy out of it, too. Naturally. 

Night one of Halloween fun = SUCCESS!

Princess Belle and The Hulk!

Trick-or-treating

Daniel spent most of the time running way ahead of the rest of us.

Diana LOVED her costume! She was so excited she could finally wear it.

Daniel admiring the decorations.

Some of the decorations (like this one) were pretty neat. For the most part, though, they were pretty gruesome and scary. I was surprised since this event was designed for kids.

The kids loved the petting zoo!

Daniel kept kissing all of the animals. It was gross. We definitely rubbed hand sanitizer on his lips afterwards. Yuck.

The hay bale maze. Filled with some pretty scary decorations and people, we're glad we did it while it was light out.

The rare clear picture of Daniel.. one of only a couple that I could get of Daniel all night. He wouldn't hold still!

Diana enjoying some frosting. Yes, that is a cupcake, but, being a Steadman, she ONLY ate the frosting.

Garage Redo

As a kid, growing up in California, we always had carpet in our garage. Our garage wasn't "carpeted", we just had old carpet laid down to cover the entire garage floor so we could use our garage as a living/play space, and so we wouldn't have to walk on the concrete. My mom still has carpet in her garage (though now she has indoor/outdoor carpet in her garage), and Mike liked the idea so much that he decided he wanted to do it with our garage (SCORE! I always loved having the garage as a play space). Our house is pretty small, so we decided it would be nice to have another small space for our kids to play, especially since we only use our garage for storage, as it is WAY too small to park a car in there. His parents were getting new carpet a few weeks ago, so Mike asked them if we could have a big chunk of their old carpet to put in our garage, and they graciously obliged, even giving up an extra piece of their new carpet to put in there, too. Soooo, this weekend Mike totally cleaned out the garage (brought all the stuff inside, swept, sprayed down, and ajaxed the concrete), and got to work carpeting. It was a LOT of work, and he just might have destroyed his back doing it, but he got it done really fast and it looks AWESOME! And the kids ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!! Tomorrow, we'll finish putting all the stuff back in the garage, but it doesn't look like our storage stuff will take up TOO much space, so the kids should still have a good size area to play in. Plus, now all of their toys are out in the garage, so the inside of my house will stay that much cleaner (BONUS!!). It's definitely a magically thing.

A little after he started...trimming up the edges for a perfect fit.

Look at all that good work!

"Ta-da!"

Lots of hard, sweaty work, but it definitely paid off!

Trying out their new area for the first time...they're SO jazzed!

This morning with some of the stuff back in (and with the piece of new carpet set on top of this section).

The kids playing in their new space after church. They're in heaven!