Update

We had a couple of fantastic parenting moments with the girls on Sunday that just have to be shared. Jason wrote a blog post about it on his blog, so follow this link and check it out. It's SUPER funny, but AMAZINGLY accurate :)

I'm afraid we are in trouble!

http://jaysessays.blogspot.com/

Is this Barak Obama?

As we approach the end of the summer the girls are out of day camps, classes, etc. So we have been trying to find things for them to do around the clinic that they might think are interesting. We have a bunch of old magazines and newspapers that have collected from our lobby and so I thought it would be fun to introduce them to the idea of collage building. I explained that they could cut out pictures of things that they liked or recognized that they wanted to put in their collage. They thought this was a lot of fun for a couple of reasons, not the least being that they get to cut stuff up to their little hearts' content and make a huge mess. Mandy and I were able to get some work done during all of this too with very little supervision required.





At one point I heard the girls talking about finding a picture of President Barak Obama that they could cut out to put in their collages. I thought that wouldn't be hard since most of the magazines were old issues of Time. Rilee, however, found a picture of our Commander & Chief in Health magazine. She brought it over and asked: "Dad, is this a good picture of Obama?"





Here is what she showed me:

I've heard him called an "Uncle Tom" before but this was entirely new.

CHEESE!

Rainy Daze

Are so boring...

We go a little crazy!

Burrrrrrito!

Ch - Ch - Ch - Changes!

It's amazing how much a baby changes in a week. His sisters are getting bigger too :)

"Those fit PERFECT"

Rilee is our fashionista. She has a very distinct sense of style. She's known for her various crazy pants that she pairs with a shirt that is just as awesome. She knows what she likes and wears it proudly.

Over Easter weekend we headed to Portland. This trip included a stop by the Nike employee store for new shoes. Jason took Taylor and found some super cute shoes that she wanted. They have stars on the bottom, the selling point for Taylor. Taylor's shoes are white running shoes with a pink wave on the side.

I took Rilee. I figured she'd be pretty easy. She likes lots of different things, so I figured I could get her set up and do some shopping for myself. Boy was I wrong. I must have gone through 5 or 6 pairs of shoes. I made her try them on even if she said she didn't like them. I thought maybe I could sell them to her by saying how fast she looked. Nothing worked...they were either to big or to small, or so she said.

Well, these shoes were my last resort. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the shoes, but I had a hard time figuring out what they would match with. Well, I showed her the shoes and the first thing she said was "Those fit PERFECT". She hadn't even tried them on. Needless to say, she's worn them almost everyday since :)

Our Little...BIG Man!

He's finally here. Alston Jamaal was born April 3, 2009 at 11:37pm. The inducing process began at 8:30am so it was a long and boring day for me. The girls had preschool and I had scheduled Jason some patients in the morning, so I watched al ot of TV and read magazines while we waited for my body to respond to the potocin. LONG story short, Alston was born weighing 9lbs 10oz and 21.25 inches long. He won the prize for biggest baby that day :)
Currently he is out of the newborn size of clothes and is stretching the 0-3 months...and he's only 1 week old!
My mom was here helping until last night. What a blessing she is! Not only did she take care of me and my family, but she took the night shifts EVERY night. I was one rested mama!! Last night was my first night of getting up with Alston. It went better than I had expected. There's so much anticipation of the unknown when it comes to a newborn and sleeping during the night. Such is life :)

Cute Pics of the Girls

I thought I should post some cute pictures of the girls before this blog becomes over run with Alston pics! Speaking of which, I'm scheduled for induction at 7:30am tomorrow morning!

The girls and I headed up to Salem a couple of Thursday's ago to surprise Jason and go to dinner. He teaches at the Oregon School of Massage on Thursdays, so that was fun. Wendie, one of our fabulous massage therapists treated the girls to a carousel ride. They LOVED it! :)

Then we played there at the Riverfront Park.

Just a crazy pic of the girls at the zoo last month. We've really enjoyed all the chances we've gotten to create memories with my mom and dad while Jason does his CCSP classes.

I just had to include this one of Rilee. It's SO her!

Looks like April 3rd!

Today was our ultrasound. It was so neat to be able to see him this far along. I never had any "growth" ultrasounds with the girls, so this was new for me. He is so cute!! This kid has HUGE cheeks. He's also got his daddy's black people lips! His head and chest area all measured "pretty big" the ultrasound lady said and his leg bones are "really long". Currently he's weighing in at a whopping 8lbs 3oz plus or minus 1.5lbs. He's 90% developed, so we are really close to the end.

I'm pretty sure that they will wait to induce me until the 3rd of April given that he's not weighing in at like 11 lbs or anything outrageous like that. I think we are okay with that. It kinda hit us that we only have 2 weeks max left before we have a BABY! So the lists of things to get done before he comes have begun. You would think we would have had those running alot sooner, but I think we were in denial :)

Well this Young family is super excited to have our baby join us. He's cute, healthy, big and a boy. What more could we ask for?!

Okay, so I guess I am a little big.

We are closing in on the final stages of pregnancy. There are a lot of emotions that go on in this stage for me. There are lots of things to be excited about. Not be pregnant, to hold our baby, to see how happy and helpful the girls will be and for Jason to finally quit telling me how excited he is to watch ESPN with is son. Fear is another strong emotion. I am such a routine and schedule person. I know that Alston is going to require me to change up most, if not all, of my little routines that I have down for me and the girls. Sometimes I'm nervous about the delivery. Given that I've delivered two 9lbs+ babies already, I'm not too worried about it. I just hope that all goes well.

With all that emotion stuff out of the way, let's talk about how BIG I really am. Last week I scheduled an ultrasound to check the growth and weight of the baby. While scheduling the appointment, I was told that I was HUGE compared to the ladies daughter who is only a week behind me. There were several references as to what he would come out doing...shaving, playing football, walking, you get my drift. I just kind of laughed it off. These ladies were just ultrasound receptionist, what did they know?! Apparently more than I thought.

Today we had another appt (I'm on the weekly schedule now). When the nurse came and got me from the waiting area, she commented on how big I was looking, then double checked her chart, only to say very surprised "But you still have 4 weeks left girl." Then promptly asked me to get on the scale...great timing, don't you think. Anyways after the usual checking of blood pressure and listening to the heartbeat, Dr. Curtis had me lay back to measure my belly. I was looking up at the cool little mobile they have hanging from the ceiling, noticing that she was taking a while to get the measurement. I look at her and she has this nervous/confused look on her face. I asked her what the number was and she just grinned, tilted her head and said 41!! FORTY-ONE? Are you kidding me, I'm only 36 weeks and I'm measuring 41? So I ask, what was it last week...38! I grew THREE inches in a week. I could not even believe it!!! No wonder I've been so tired and having to get adjustments on a daily basis. Jason, having watched Dr. Curtis's face the entire time she was measuring said that she had to do a double take of both the measuring tape and my chart given the amount of growth and the fact that technically I still have 4 weeks to go.

Well the ultrasound is scheduled for Tuesday at 11:00. We will have a guestimate as to how big he is then. I guess it gets within +/- 1 or 2 lbs. So we should know more next week.

Stay tuned...:)

The Party

Yesterday was our anniversary party. We had alot of fun. Lots of fabulous food and even better people. Jason updated the clinics blog with photos of the set-up (I think you can access it by clicking on the link there to your right), but I wanted to share with you pics of the girls.

Libby and Wendie were telling the girls to breathe deep and relax. You should have heard the heavy breathing going on. It was so funny!

After they were done with their chair massage, they both quickly made 30 min appts with Wendie for this Saturday. What three and four year old girls get 30 min massages?!!? They couldn't be more excited :)

It's a Party and YOU are invited!

As mentioned in the previous post, the clinic has recently celebrated it's one year anniversary. For those of you that know us pretty well, you know that Jason and I like to throw/attend/create parties. What better way to celebrate one of the biggest accomplishments (besides our kids, of course) of our married lives, than to have a party.

Here are the details:

We are celebrating a fantastic year of helping people and changing lives through Chiropractic care and massage. We want to thank everybody who has been a part of our best year yet. If you haven't come by to visit us or use our services yet we want to meet you.Here is what you can expect:

* Free Chair Massage throughout the day by our Licensed Massage Therapists
* Door Prize Drawings every 30 minutes for gift certificates, merchandise, etc.
* Delicious refreshments
* Brief presentations every hour by Dr. Young on the following topics: "5 Steps to a Happy Back", "Avoiding the 5 Pains of Parenting", "How Vital are Vitamins?"

Stop by the clinic at 985 NW 23rd Street in Corvallis between the hours of 11:00am and 5:30pm. We can hardly wait to celebrate with ya!

Happy Birthday

That's right...we had another birthday in our family!

Body of Health Chiropractic and Wellness Center (imagine saying that to every insurance company you call to check benefits with) turned a year old today. On this day, one year ago we saw our first patient...exactly one patient, but our first none the less. I'm happy to report, that patient survived :) and we are even seeing him again tomorrow for his monthly check up.

What a fantastic, crazy, exhausting, painful and exciting experience this has been for us. The girls have been such troopers, spending many many late nights here as we tried to figure out how to operate the business side of things. We get asked all the time how our marriage survives while working together. I'm not sure why it works, but it does. I love working with Jason. We boss each other (okay, I do most of the bossing) around like an old married couple and it works just fine...for me today!

Our massage therapist are some of the best around. We are just one big happy Body of Health family here! They are so supportive to us. We all started out this venture together, as they were new to their massage business as well. What a fun ride this has been for us all.

Here's to a year that we are happy is under our belt and to many more!

We did celebrate Halloween :)

Here are some pics of the girls on Halloween. We started off by going to Albany to trick-o-treat at the businesses downtown on the Saturday before the 31st. This was our first time and we loved it. On the actual holiday itself, we hit up the businesses in downtown Corvallis during the day and then went around our neighborhood that night. It was so much fun. We could hardly keep up with Taylor who was running from door to door saying "Trick or Treat, Happy Halloween, Go Beavers" it was pretty fun!!

They had the building open where they are creating all the animals for the massive carousel that will go in somewhere in Albany. It was amazing to see all the people carving and painting these. This is Rilee on her bear.
And Taylor on her Bunny.