Halloween Baking Day

I LOVE holiday baking.  This year, there were so many new recipes that I wanted to try, but I was running out of time before Halloween.  So, Brittany and Joy offered to come over and have a "Baking Day" with me.  We made 4 new recipes and had so much fun.  We each took home plates of goodies to give out to our neighbors.

We made Candy Corn Cupcakes, Monster Blob Cookies, Oreo Truffles, and Maple Cookies.

The Monster Cookies turned out to be really fun for my kids.  They each helped make their own monster and decorate it.  Next year I'll let them make a whole batch :)

The gift baskets:

The big helper:

Sadly, we didn't get a picture of the three of us.  But, we are going to do a Thanksgiving Baking Day and a Christmas Baking Day too so we'll have to take one then :)

The history of Superbaby...

For Gregor's first Halloween, my mom bought this cute Super-Baby costume.

Since then, it has gotten a lot of use...

Super Gregor - October 1986

              

Super Brookie - October 1993                                   

 

Super Kasen - October 1999

 

Super Bridger - October 2008

 

Super Dalton - October 2010

Isn't that funny?...Over 20 years of Super-Baby!

I've always wondered where my kids get their quirky little personalities and funny expressions.  After looking at these pictures, I've decided it must be from Brookie.  Check out her dark hair and eyebrows-up expression.  She could be one of my kids.

And, I don't think my kids look that much alike.  But...as babies, they are almost identical.  The picture of Super-Bridger and Super-Dalton look so much alike that I don't know if I would have been able to tell which baby is which without looking at where we were and who we were with.  Like we've said before, I guess we only make one kind of baby :)

Baby Love

We're loving our new baby around here, and here's some random pictures of the little guy...

He LOVES his bath...

He LOVES smoochin'...

He LOVES to be snuggled...

And he LOVES his big brothers...

We can't seem to remember life before Dalton.

It seems like he's always been a part of us.

Beautiful

My Aunt Janet is in town and stopped by to see Dalton and she gave him this BEAUTIFUL quilt.

I LOVE it and tried to describe it to my mom, but a picture is always better, so here it is...

This one is from Amy:

It's thick, and warm, and soft, and we're taking it on our walk tonight to keep him warm.

 I keep trying to convince Amy to  move out here, and if she ever did, I would talk her into teaching me how to sew :)

Bridger seems to think the quilts are race tracks.

He keeps taking his cars and maneuvering them around the patches.l

He's a little jealous that the quilts are Dalton's :)

Thank you guys so much!

I love them and I know Dalton will too!

At 5 days...

It's incredible to watch how fast my kids grow and change.

Dalton is already a month old, and it's going by so fast.

I met with the spine specialist at Primary Children's last week to learn a little more about what's going on with Dalton.

He said that at 3 weeks gestation, what will eventually be the spinal cord develops.  That signals all of the other cells to decide what they will be.  The ones that will be vertebrae need to decide to be vertebrae, and then find their matching half, and meet up on either side of the pre-spinal cord, and then get in order.  With Dalton, they never found their matching half.  So, he has half-vertebrae on each side that stack up, alternating, like a zipper instead of like building blocks.  His lower back in fine, but from the top of his lower back, all the way up through his neck, he has these alternating hemi-vertebrae.  It is called "congenital scoliosis" because it happened as he was created, rather than developing throughout life.  His spine is also curved, although at this point the curve is small.  For right now, we don't need to do anything but wait and see what will happen.  They will monitor him every few months up at Primary's to see how fast his spine changes.  The doctor said that it doesn't make him more fragile, so just treat him like a normal baby, and we'll go back in February and see how he's changing.  We also need to check on his heart and kidneys because they develop at the same time as the spine.  It's possible that when something goes wrong with one of the initial developments, it goes wrong with all of them.  The doctor said he's probably fine, but just to keep it in mind.

At 3 weeks gestation, before I even knew I was pregnant, he was developing his most essential body systems.

 At 6 weeks gestation, the he has a heart that beats between 100-160 beats per minute.

At 12 weeks and just about 2 inches long, he can already move his fingers and toes.

By 15 weeks you can already tell if it's a boy or a girl (I was 15 1/2 weeks with Saxon and he was very obviously a boy)

Each week they grow and change so fast until they are finally born, and then they continue to grow and change right before your eyes.

So, here is Dalton Gregor Gailey, at 5 days old...

Brittany took these beautiful pictures for us, but I wanted to wait until we sent out the baby announcements to post them.

First picture of our new family together...

My 3 boys.  I love the grumpy faces.  They were getting tired of pictures :)

They are constantly in awe of the new little person in their lives...

And a cute one of my sweet Bubs...

More from this season...

Nate had the day off today so we went back to the canyon since our pass was still valid.

This time, we started on the Provo Canyon side and drove back through to American Fork Canyon.

The colors were amazing!

We kept stopping the car to take pictures.  There were so many people pulled over taking pictures that it was hard to find a place to stop.  It was 75 degrees out and perfect.

I tried to look up a quote or poem on the changing seasons on lds.org, but what I found was several talks on savoring the seasons of life.  I really loved what they all had to say.  They talked about loving the season of life that you are in. 

A November 1992 Liahona Visiting Teaching Message said, "A joyful outlook can be part of all of our seasons.  We invite each woman to value who she is and and count the ways she can bless herself and others around her."  

I have done a lot of things that I have really loved (college, Romania, mission to Brasil, working, dating Nate, getting married, setting up a home, etc.)  But, I have to say, my favorite thing I've done so far is having babies.  I love being a mom and I love my babies.  I hope to have lots of them and I really love this season that I'm in.  Now if only I had a bigger car... :)

My cute babies:

Saxon

Bridger

Dalton

Bridger loved playing at the reservoir.

He kept running up to the water and saying

"Daddy!  Check it out!"

It turns out he found horseshoe prints in the water.

It was kind of cool.

It is so fun to take my kids to do new things.  They think that everything is exciting and amazing and it makes it all exciting and amazing for us again too.

Days like today make me glad that I live in Utah.  I'm not always glad to live in Utah, I still miss California, but  I think if we ever moved, I would really miss Utah.