Crazy Busy

I've been having so much fun with my kiddos this holiday season i forgot to blog during it all :) Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas were so much fun with 2 kids! It was especially fun seeing the excitement in Lydia's face hehe She enjoyed each one of the holidays and let EVERYONE know. For Halloween, Lydia was Lydia Bug and Brie was Bumble Brie :) it was super cute and we had so much fun trick or treating with my mom and especially Cody, Ali, and Addie Willis.

For Thanksgiving, we went to the Griffin's house and had a lot of family there. They have a huge backyard with everything a little kid could want to play with. Lydia was out there pretty much all day and i had to beg her to come back inside later that night. We also we went Max's parents house and ate some really yummy food and had fun with the fam :) Christmas was a blast! And the days leading up to Christmas were a blast! The girls loved seeing the lights up everywhere and they loved decorating the house. They woke up in the morning around 7 and they tore open their gifts so fast. Max and I were talking about how its crazy how we used to be so excited for Christmas and couldn't wait to see what we got. And now, we were so excited to see the girls reactions to what they got :) I really want this years resolution (besides losing weight obviously) to be to take more pics and video of my family. i don't want them to have to try to rely on their memories to picture how their childhood was. i want to be able to SHOW them along with telling them. I REALLY slacked this past year. i have some random pics from the past few months I'll attach to this post lol But i missed major picture times especially for thanksgiving and Christmas :/ Brie's birthday is a week from Tuesday so i will try my best :)

I think my girls are just so beautiful!

My little drama queen :) Brie has been able to do the pouty lip since she was a newborn! How can i say no to that face? I'm in trouble when she's older haha

Lydia is a big help with her little sister

When it cooled off a bit more, we got to go outside more. Lydia's aunt chewy would take her to the park all the time!

Brie has been loving real food! She would eat all day if she could

There was one day, after nap time, i went into Lydia's room to wake her up and i couldn't find her anywhere! after awhile of me yelling for her and looking around the house, i found her in a clothes box in here room completely passed out! She started waking up by the time i got my camera but it was so funny :) She wasn't amused and i was told to leave her room "right now!"

So Lydia always walks to the mailbox with me during the day to get the mail. i would always give her the junk mail and she would get so excited saying "its MINE?!" SO this past year, she would send mail back and forth to her grandma Rieck. Her face lights up when she gets a card from grandma!

Gettin' to it

Well, I'm finally getting around to updating this thing lol Its been a few MONTHS! (it might get a little boring but, i want to update it like my journal lol u can skip if u like...) The past few weeks have been a roller coaster for our family. We've had A LOT of car drama. In August, i went to a girls night with some aunts and cousins of mine. While i was out with them, Max took the girls to a family party that his side of the family was having. While i was playing games with everyone Max called me and said that he was heading home and the car started smoking and broke down. AND he had 2 tired, screaming girls in the back :( So he called a tow truck and me and my sister Alicia drove to go pick them up. Luckily we found someone to fix it for cheap (it ended up being the radiator). Then a couple weeks later, Max (poor guy) was driving home from hanging out with a friend of his and the car totally broke down on the freeway! We decided, since we didn't want this car in the long run, to just get rid of it instead of putting more money into it. SO, the next day, we went car shopping and found the perfect car (van to be exact lol). We had our other car paid off so we now have a car payment but its worth it for the piece of mind :) A few days later...Max's work truck breaks down! (he needs to stop breaking our cars! lol jk i still love u ;) BUT we were SO lucky to find this awesome guy out here in Maricopa that just completely fixed it in our budget :D Hopefully all our car problems r over *sigh* As far as all of us go, Max (being a pool guy) is excited that its getting cooler here hehe He works so hard at his job and i really appreciate what he does for our family :) I'm looking forward to the holidays! On the 1st of this month, Lydia and i decorated to house with all our Halloween and fall decor. its so much fun and seeing how excited she's getting, makes it that much more fun. Lydia is one of the funniest kids i know. She says things sometimes that really surprise me lol She's gotten to the point where she will listen when Max and i r talking and she will comment on it haha We have to really watch what we say around her. She has hit the jealousy stage :/ When Brie was first born, she was just super protective with her and not jealous AT ALL. but now she gets really excited when Brie goes down for a nap cause then she gets her Mommy and Daddy all to herself. The other night, after work, i needed to go to the mall to return some things. i decided to take Lydia just o get her out of the house and out of her dads hair for a bit (if u didn't know, she's a super daddy's girl lol). i was going to make it a quick trip BUT, we got to the mall and my mood was quickly changed. we walked to the different stores so i could return my stuff and she was just having so much fun just being there just me and her :) We ended up going into the Disney store, we went into Claire's and they were having a huge sale so i gave her a little basket they had and let her pick out a few things. She thought that was just the most amazing thing ever! They also had little rides so she went on a couple. After we we done with all that, we went to the food court and got ice cream. As we were sitting there, she said "dis is soooo fun, mommy. and Brie's not here" haha! We just really needed a little girls time :)

By the time we got home, it was 9pm so she was pretty out of it. SO Max was carrying her upstairs and, half asleep, she says "i wove u mommy. Dank u for the mall." It made my heart melt :) I've decided to make it something we do more often. Well, Miss Brie is just growing right before my eyes! She is pretty much crawling now, she says 'mama' (for me and Max lol), and she now waves and says 'bye'. Its so weird cause i still picture her as my tiny baby. i have to remind myself that she is 8 months old! In a few short months, shes going to be 1! Brie was my extremely hard newborn. She was constantly crying and nothing would get her to stop. My mom always had a special touch with her tho lol But we couldn't just hang out at my mom's all the time. After she got her first 2 teeth (at 2 months old!) She has done a complete turn around. She is the sweetest, snuggliest, and smartest baby i know :) I love in the mornings when its just her and i before everyone else gets up. She just sits and "talks" with me for awhile :) She's my little nugget and i just love her SO much!

This is an awesome prize! I love photo editing so this would be my dream to have especially since we don't have it in our budget to but any fun photo software lol. http://jennrocket.blogspot.com/2012/05/totally-rad-photoshop-filter-giveaway.html

What's been going on

*Photo Overload Ahead*

It's been awhile since I've posted it's just been pretty crazy over here at the Rieck house. Max has been working like crazy. He's a pool guy so especially since its getting hotter here, he has to work overtime getting pools ready for people to swim AND cause its getting so hot, its been making his job a lot harder (poor guy!)
Daycare's going pretty well for me. I thought it would be really hard adding a new baby to the mix but its not any different actually. She has been a pretty tough baby but shes getting a lot better now that's shes sleeping through the night (and I'm feeling a lot more sane lol). We had her blessing at my parents house on March 11th and it went really well. It was nice having family and friends there.
She was so cute in her little white dress hehe






My girls ready for easter egg hunting




Lydia turned 2 and is letting all of us know haha




I love my beautiful girl :) She is definitely 'miss attitude'. We had Lindsay do our family pictures on Saturday and she let her inner diva out the whole time. we were begging her to say cheese so, what did she do? She said cheese without smiling... little goober :) But we ended up getting some pretty good shots...







I love my girls :)





of coarse we had some break downs...



Sisters :)



Yes, i get to kiss those chubby cheeks everyday hehe








I love my little family. Things have been tough lately but i wouldnt change anything. I have 2 adorable, healthy, and extreamly smart girls and a husband that is such a good daddy and takes extremely good care of all us girls :) (and i think he's kinda cute ;))

Keep it comin'!

So i gained 40 lbs with this pregnancy :/ which isn't as bad as the 50 i gained with Lydia. Also with Lydia, i lost 20 lbs in the hospital right away but, months after she was born, i was at the SAME weight for the rest of the year pretty much. it took a lot of work to get any weight off at all. Well, I'm so happy to say, i only have 10 more lbs to lose with this pregnancy! I was really worried cause i thought i would've lost a TON in the hospital (especially when my water broke and GALLONS came out) but after i got home from the hospital, i weighed myself and lost....absolutely nothing. nothing at all. What the heck? you would think i would've lost how much the baby weighs right? well anyway, i got really swollen so i knew that when the water weight came off, i would probably lose a lot. So i started weight watchers and have already lost 30 lbs since she was born 3 weeks ago :) I'm a happy camper right now. I definitely wont be anywhere close to my goal weight even after i lose the 10 lbs but, its a good start :)

Gabriella Jane Rieck

Welp, she's here! We were told we were on baby watch but we really didnt think she would come a whole month early! lol This blog is pretty much a journal for our family so here's the birth story (sorry if its not 2 exciting and a little TMI lol)...

So, on the 4th (a Saturday), Max and i were getting everything for the baby coming soon. We installed the carseat and cleaned a lot of the house. My mom and my sister Alicia came over that day and asked how i was feeling and i told them that i felt great :) I wasnt haveing many contractions (i had been having them for a few months) so i really thought things were going ok and that she would stay in there pretty close to here due date. Then, around 5:30pm i started having some MAJOR contractions. When they got that bad, i would usually take a bath and they would dye down a lot. So before i got into the bath, i noticed quite a bit of blood. It freaked me out and the contractions were stonger than they've ever been so i told Max that i thought it might be time. I called my parents on the way to their house and asked if they could take Lydia. Luckly my sister was there and told us that she would take her for the night (we didnt know if we would get sent home or not).
My mom actually came in the car with us in case things got really bad and i needed more help.
The contractions were pretty bad driving there but my mom kept my mind off it most of the time. The hospital was an hour away so it was pretty tough :(
They checked me into triage and hooked me up to the monitors. By now, the contractions were so strong that i couldnt even imagine getting sent home. I didnt care that it was still 4 weeks til my due date lol I wanted the baby out and for the pain to stop. My dr came by and he said that he wanted me to walk around for about an hour to see i f i would dialate even more (i was already a 4). I thought "r u freakin kidding me?! im in so much pain! i cant walk around!". My dr came back 2 minutes later and said "nevermind, ive been watching the monitor and ur having huge contractions every 2 minutes. We are going to admit you." We were to happy :) They wheeled me back to my room and my dr wanted to check me and break my water. (This is when it gets a little gross but, sorry lol my blog...) He broke my water and, no joke, water came POURING out. Not just regular. It was gallons of water! The dr said he had never seen anything like it. and the nurse said that she had worked at that hospital for 15 years and had never seen that much water come out of someone lol I mustve lost 20lbs just then lol And looking at my stomach after that, i already felt SO skinny haha
The contractions got a little worse so i got the epidural. It kinda worked but not completely. I was so nervous to have another birth experience like Lydia's (the epidural never fully kicked in so i felt everything). So they called the guy back in to give me a higher dose. It worked for about an half hour and then wore off again. By this time (3am), my best friend Lindsay and her mom came to hang out and be there for the birth. I was in SO much pain and was able to feel everything. The nurse checked me and told me it was time to start pushing. i told her that i NEEDED something for the pain and that i didnt want to feel anything. They gave me one more dose of meds but it didnt do anything. They said that my body just didnt get numb from the meds. Oh crap. Thats when i started to panic. I knew how it felt to have a baby natural and i NEVER wanted to feel that again. But they were all ready and in the room so i knew i had to push (even tho i was crying...a lot lol)
i only had to push for 15 minutes and then she was out. It was such a surreal feeling. I could hear her crying and i couldnt help but to cry a bit myself :) It was such an amazing experience. and i loved sharing it with the people i had in the room. They were all such a good support system and they said it was amazing for them to witness. She came at 5:53am and was 7lbs 5oz and 20inches long :)
(thanks to Lindsay for taking all the pics!)

























Brie did ok the first couple nights but then they said she had really bad jaundice. We didnt even know she couldnt come home with us until the day we were getting ready to leave. I took it really hard. It just wasnt what i had planned on at all. There was a lot of crying on my part. Brie took everything like a champ. It killed me tho cause she hardly ever cried and the one time she did, was when we had to take her to the nursery and hand her over to the nurse. She started crying so loud and i lost it. it kinda makes me wanna cry just thinking about it. I had to leave the room fast before i really had a break down. We had so much support from family and friends and people from our ward. it really helped us get through everything.
I called the hospital a lot the next couple of days to check up on her and they would always say that she hasnt changed or that it got a little worse. Then after a couple days, they called and said that we could go pick her up :) it was the best day lol
We just love having her around. Its still so weird to me that i have 2 kids! When did i become a grown up? lol And now this girl is happy and healthy and already almost weighs 8 lbs! preemie? i dont think so lol We just love her so much :)

Bring on Baby :)

Well, I'm just gonna say it...hospitals are SO boring lol I was having some bleeding and major contractions. I was also feeling a lot of pressure down there. So i called my Dr and they said to go into the hospital right away. Our hospital is an hour away so we dropped everything and heading right over there.
They had us in triage for awhile and then the nurse came back with an apologetic look on her face. She said "well you just earned urself a night in the hospital". They wanted to monitor me and make sure that all the bleeding would stop. We ended up having Lydia sleep at Alicia's house and Alicia and my mom watched my babysitting kids for me the next day. It was a looong night in the hospital. They had a fetal monitor on me and another monitor on my belly to track my contractions. The major problem was that the baby didn't like either monitor on me so she would kick it off every 15 minutes. Every time i would get comfortable and try to sleep, the nurses would come in and have to find the heartbeat again (which would take about 15 min) so needless to say, i didn't get any sleep. But i was so glad i was there cause i started to have more bleeding. Because of that, they made me stay there another night :( All in all tho, everything looked awesome when i was discharged. They said the baby was fine and they also gave me a couple steroid shots so her lungs will develop faster in the chance that she comes out soon. Now it's just a lot of bed rest for me lol
I had an ultrasound while i was there and it was pretty awesome :) They did a close up on her face and she started yawning :) It was the cutest thing seeing her nose all scrunched up when she did. It made the fact that i was having a baby SO real. The Dr said that we have to be prepared for a baby any day. Thanks everyone for ur thoughts and prayers! i know for a fact they helped us with all this :)