It only took until April 1st for Reagan and Lauren to be able to wear their full snow gear we bought back in October!! (You have to be prepared for anything in Utah). The kids and Betsy LOVED spending the day outside in the white stuff. And it was late enough in the year, they didn’t even need hot chocolate after to warm up. In fact, they were hot when they finally made their way inside.

Cub Scouts begins for boys at the age of eight normally. For us however, we were invited to the Blue and Gold Banquet in February. While there, we were then invited to participate in the Pinewood Derby in March. Reagan was so excited about the Pinewood Derby (not sure where his knowledge came from). He wanted to race home that night to start cutting the wood and designing his car. I told him he had a month, and we could at least wait until the weekend before hitting Dad up to pull out the tools. Derron purchased a few more tools and just needed to get the belt tightened to get started. Uncle Ricky came over to borrow a different power tool of ours, and decided to tighten the saw band for Derron. He tested it out by grabbing the closest piece of what he thought was scrap wood and chopped it right in half  (this scrap piece of wood being Reagan’s pinewood derby car wood block). Reagan’s chin hit the floor and out came the tears, lots of tears. The poor boy was devastated!!!! Rik felt terrible and offered to replace the car. So I threw kids in the car, drove to the scout shop, and purchased a new car kit. WHEW! Catastrophe fixed.  Momma took care of it that instant. I was the hero!!

Reagan and Derron got to work and finished the car just in the nick of time (the night before the race). Derron used all the tips he knew and could find to make the car the best possible without cheating of course. We showed up at the church and had a surprise of Grandpa Fairbanks and Ryan and Cubbie there to watch Reagan’s first race (Ryan just happened to be in town that weekend).

It was time for Reagan’s first race. His car soared right past the other three cars. Then again, and again and again…….until he won the Fastest Car award. He even set a new track record that was set over two years prior. The Ward was so excited, they announced he won first place in Primary the next Sunday! He was very proud of himself and Dad. What a fun memory and many more Pinewood Derby memories to come.

Congrats Reagan. Way to start out your Pinewood Derby career!!!

(This seems weird to post considering Calvin is here now, but I had to post it for memory sake).

Every pregnant couple looks forward to the big day. No not necessarily the delivery day, I’m talking about the 20 week ultrasound day. The half way point in the pregnancy. The day that the parents get to find out the gender of their bun in the oven.

With Reagan we were so nervous that the ultrasound would reveal a missing limb or Downs Syndrome or something seriously wrong with the baby.  We had always wanted to have a boy first, so our other children would have an older brother to look up to. Derron and I had a hunch it was going to be a boy, before we had the ultrasound. The ultrasound confirmed our hunch of course. Lauren was a bit different. Before we even got pregnant with Lauren, we knew it would be a girl. The name discussion was even fairly painless with her.

Derron and I had agreed a LONG time ago that if we had a boy and a girl, with the next baby we wouldn’t find out the gender at the big ultrasound. Why would we need to? We would have clothing for both genders. Our nursery is neutral. Toys, we would also have plenty of boy toys and girl toys by then. The only hard part would be coming up with two names. We never considered it selfish in any way to wait, like all parents had to before the time of routine ultrasounds.

As discussed a LONG time ago, the third pregnancy happened, the ultrasound was scheduled, the water was consumed, and the jelly placed on the belly for the big ultrasound. I had told the Dr in advance that we weren’t going to find out the gender. The ultrasound tech did everything she could to avoid us as parents seeing anything between the legs. They usually spend a good 3-5 minutes getting a precise look at the genitalia. When the tech was in the general pelvic area, she advised us to look away. I looked away immediately, but Derron hesitated a few seconds. He didn’t see  anything anyway (not that if he had, he would have been able to recognize anything). He reminded me that everything she is looking at will be on the video she is recording for us. The tech commented how the baby was squirming and covering its genitalia, and if we wanted to, we would NOT have been able to determine the babys gender at that ultrasound. So even on the video, nothing is shown, no specific parts to identify if its a boy or girl.

We have heard from many supportive people that they are excited we are waiting until the actual delivery date to find out the babys gender. Others however, have been less than supportive with our decision! Let me apologize to those who are unhappy with us…I am very sorry that our choice has made you judge us as selfish parents. However, it is OUR child, and OUR pregnancy, and well, OUR decision. So get off our backs, will ya.

The hard part of waiting to find out the gender is the fact that Derron wholeheartedly believes this baby is a boy, and I am convinced its a girl.

This time around……..no hunches, no feelings before getting pregnant. At the present time, we are 13 weeks away from my due date. Derron still teases me that its going to be a boy, and I pray daily its a girl. I won’t have the normal 20 weeks to adjust to it being a boy if it ends up being one. Not to mention the fact that Derron will rub it in that he was right for years to come. I told him in all honesty that if its a boy, I will love it, but I might shed a tear or two in the beginning. I will adjust quickly though. I will be happy to hold our infant for the first time, boy or girl. All I want is a healthy third child to join us in this earthly life. I truly feel this way. I am happy to be experiencing this pregnancy. Childbearing truly is a miracle. Feeling the creature inside me stretching out and having the hiccups, is absolutely amazing.

Knowing we only want three children, we are enjoying each step of this pregnancy. I wanted it so badly for several years before we were given the ok to start trying. So each and every bout of nausea, each kick, each Dr’s appointment I am savoring.

The past two Black Friday’s I have ventured out among the crazy shoppers instead of staying home and breaking out the Christmas tree and decorations, as I have done in the past. Hence, the Christmas tree has not been displayed as early as we all would like. As a side note however, this Black Friday shopping has saved us a lot of money. and this year, lets just say Christmas wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Black Friday shopping and online shopping late at night when the stores were closed!

It wasn’t just Black Friday that altered our usual plans. Something else threw us off this time around. Our Ward and Stake were realigned just prior to Halloween. I ended up receiving two callings, one which I had before the realignment. I belong to the Relief  Society Activity Committee (previous calling) and to the Ward Activities Committee. I must be a good COMMITTEE member, a good behind the scenes person. LOL. The only bad thing about this……..both committee’s have Christmas activities, both just three and a half weeks after receiving these two callings. Things got BUSY at the Fairbanks house! Our Ward Activities committee has 7 members total!! We were doing a Polar Express themed morning party. I was in charge of decorations. Now this party is the largest the ward does each year. We were anticipating 230 this year. My fearsome trio of helpers were put to work immediately. Derron came the night before the party to help decorate. The kids were there too. The night before the party we were there from 4:30pm until after midnight decorating. And our kids were troopers.

This party halted setting up our Christmas tree until after the Ward Christmas party because our light strands were being used as decorations.

The Relief Society activity was the following Tuesday, and seemed like nothing compared to the Ward Christmas party. Maybe its because the Relief Society committee has 13 people on its committee. Maybe its because I didn’t have to do the shopping and budgeting for decorations for such a large group. Maybe its because for the Relief Society activity, I was in charge of printing fliers. Piece of cake. Well, actually Derron made them for me because they were copies of a poster which was created in some Adobe application I had no clue how to use.

After the exhaustion wore off, we managed to pull out the containers full of Christmas decorations along with the tree, and began assembling it on December 17th! That’s right folks, the 17th of December. Our kids were really getting worried we were going to skip Christmas this year. Maybe we shouldn’t have threatened that result so much when the kids misbehaved. we really had them stressed!! We still carried on our tradition of unwrapping and reading a Christmas book each night right before bedtime beginning on December 1st. This is a tradition the kids love.

We attempted to decorate the tree as much as we could in one night. Time escaped as usual, and we had to call it a night around 11pm. The next morning, I staggered out of the bedroom and noticed a few additional decorations on our tree. As I looked closer, I  realized they were at least RED decorations. They were firefighter characters which look an awful lot like army guys, you know the green plastic ones. Let me just say that our kids LOVE ‘Toy Story’ and I think one of them was placing the firefighters in the tree like they were hiding out in the plant in ‘Toy Story’ to spy on the new toys opened at Andy’s birthday party. I couldn’t help but snap some pictures of the lovely decorations!!! And who put them there I wonder? I would guess its the little one with “guilty” written across their picture in the collage to follow.

As you can tell, we managed to get the tree fully decorated and in position for Santa’s big day.

I am embarrassed to say that it is now January 17th, and our Christmas tree is still standing, fully decorated. I am hoping to take the thing down over the next two days while the kids are out of school to enlist their help. Its only been up for a month now to the date!! Come on, give me a break! I promise it won’t be up until February!!

When we signed up for piano lessons, we knew it would entail daily piano practice, weekly lessons, and two performances a year. We had no idea our son, Reagan, would play the piano every free minute of every day. Not that I am complaining. Last Winter right after starting piano lessons, it was a chore to get the boy to practice a couple of times a week. He complained the entire time.

What a difference a summer makes. Maybe it was the lack of Mom hovering over him to make sure he’s doing it correctly. Or the fact that he was able to choose the songs he practiced (usually primary songs). OK, its wasn’t the summer, its called medication for ADD. What a difference it has made. He LOVES piano lessons now, loves practicing, and wants to perform for anyone who will listen. If he is bored, he will sit at the piano and play songs from ear, alter songs in his lesson books, or make up his own compositions. He will whiz through an entire lesson book in one day if we let him. He is so eager to learn as much as he can and also as quickly as possible.  Piano practice is the very first thing he does after walking in the door from school.

He performed without hesitation this year, since he’s done it once before. The Fall performance/recital is much smaller and a more relaxed atmosphere compared to the Spring recital. And this year, he wasn’t the NEWEST student. As his parents, we look forward to the Spring recital to see how much he improves over the next five months.

We are so happy to have found something Reagan is excited about and looks forward to, unlike his soccer adventures. We love him and are extremely proud of our boy. He is blessed to have musical talent on both sides of his family……lucky duck! We love you.

Halloween costumes this year at our house consisted of Reagan as a Star Wars Clone Trooper and Lauren as a “nice” witch.

Reagan’s mask squished his nose so he wasn’t too happy to wear it. And after convincing him that taking his Nerf gun as a weapon when trick or treating, would be just one more thing to carry, he reluctantly carried it and his mask in his trick or treat bag. Reagan was shocked that only five of our neighbors guessed correctly as to exactly what his costume was. Most thought he was a transformer. Believe me, he kept track after each and every house.

Lauren was a “nice” witch. She informed us when we chose her costume that witches can be mean, but she wasn’t going to be a mean witch, she was going to be a nice witch. The skirt to the costume actually had fiber optic lights in it, and if she pressed a button, it would light up, something she showed as many people as would take the time to listen to her.

They were both very happy with the haul of candy they ended up with. Mom was glad to be home and off her feet. I was recovering from pnuemonia associated with getting the Swine Flu (H1N1), and being out in the cold didn’t help the awful cough much.

The fun part of Halloween, is anticipating what the kiddo’s will choose to be next year. Until then, enjoy the pictures from this year…