Christmas is coming!!

OK, before things get too crazy this Christmas season, I thought I would update ya'll on what's up with our fam! The most exciting event this last week was that the Parkster got his first two teeth! I couldn't believe it! He's not even four months old yet! I'm telling you, this boy is ready to eat real food! Whenever we eat in front of him he gets in this daze and just stares at the food while we eat. I feel so bad that we can't give him any yet. Probably, once he hits four months he will definitely be good to go. We also went up to Logan to see Nana and Papa report on their mission. Parker loved Logan as do his parents! Parker had a hard time leaving Nana (he knew she would give him all the food he wanted if his parents weren't looking!)


This was so funny! Last Saturday, I was painting the stairway while Parker was playing in his bouncer. He usually tries to get out of his bouncer by doing sort of a super crunch. I think it is to try and break through the lap belt with his extraordinary strength or something. I don't know. Well, in the middle of his crunch he fell asleep and never did relax. It looked so uncomfortable, yet still adorably cute!

Parker's nursery. Jordan did the trim work on the walls.

Parker already loves using his friend's toys! This was at Ethan Richardson's 1st b-day party.

Family pictures (this is the best one of Parker we had. it was his nap time so he wasn't all smiles!)

Oma and Parker at the Park!

After all the work that Amanda did to get her dental hygiene degree and license, we wanted her to be able to keep it and not let it lapse. She found a dentist that will let her work 4 hours a week from 2:00 - 6:00 on Tuesday's! Oma gladly volunteered to watch Parker from 2:00 to 4:30 until I get home from work. So far every time I've come to pick him up, Oma has taken him to some place for a picture shoot. This time it was the park, and she got some darn cute pictures!


Alright, here are a few more..

The Studliest Skunk on Halloween

First I must say -- even though she dissed my Halloween costume, I'm still extremely proud of her for posting her first blog. I'm sure now that she sees how easy it is, we'll get a few more posts out of her. Halloween really was a blast. I knew there were a lot of kids in our neighborhood, but word must have got out that daybreak was a prime spot for trick or treaters. We had a HUGE bowl of candy (10lbs)... totally prepared for the kids in hundreds of kids in our neighborhood. We got our first trick or treater at about 5:45, with 4 or 5 more until 6:00. But when six o'clock hit... the masses came out. We gave away all of our candy in about 25 minutes. I literally could not even shut my front door for the kids to knock on because they just kept coming and coming and coming... and coming! During a 10 second break I stepped out on my front porch and looked up and down the street... PACKED! That's about all I can say. From my front porch it sounded like we were in some sort of stadium with the crowd going nuts. It was loud there were so many kids. Next year we'll be more prepared -- with about 40 lbs of candy


Well, we said that we'd post some more pictures of the famous skunk boy! So here they are, enjoy!

OK, one more post by me (Amanda). I have to add some more cute pics. The weekend before Halloween, we went to Thanksgiving point for their Halloween activities. Parker got to go on his first pony ride!! Not by himself, of course. He was very brave!

Parker couldn't fit the vampire teeth in his mouth, so this one is just of the cousins. So cute!

Kylee and Brandon in the pumpkin patch!

Halloween Mania!

Happy Halloween!!!

I decided to surprise my husband by writing my first blog! He is going to be so proud of me! I guess I was motivated by the holiday spirit! Halloween is such a fun holiday for me and this one was especially fun because not only did I get to dress up myself, but I got to play dress up with the cutest boy ever!! For Parker's first Halloween costume we dressed him up as a skunk!!! Jordan wasn't as prepared for Halloween this year, so he put on an Alta Football t-shirt and said he was a football coach. (pretty pathetic!) I was an 80's aerobic instructor. Thanks to my mom for the authentic costume! Zach and Lisa, way to go on your costumes! Coming soon: some great pictures of Parker in his costume!

Deviated Septum Surgery

Just know that as I write this, I'm taking percocet every 4 hours as well as functioning on a total of 10 hours of sleep in 4 days. I feel lucid enough to update the blog, but Amanda would say otherwise. For those unaware, I was recently diagnosed with "Sleep Apnea". After going to see an ear nose throat specialist because I was having trouble breathing through my nose, I was not only told that I have a deviated septum, but that I might have sleep apnea. The doctor had me go through two sleep studies overnight at the hospital. After those visits I was officially diagnosed with sleep apnea. Apparently I stop breathing an average of 17 times an hour for about 15-45 seconds at a time. I was pretty bummed with the additional diagnoses, but looking back it was probably a blessing. In the long run sleep apnea can have some serious affects on your health, so I'm glad to try and get it fixed.

The reason I'm having the deviated septum surgery is because I have a really difficult time breathing through my nose, especially at night. The main form of treatment for sleep apnea is a CPAP (continuous positive air pressure) mask that needs to worn over the nose all night long. I tested out these masks during my sleep studies at the hospital and they were most annoying things in the world to wear while you are trying to sleep. So I got the deviated septum surgery for one of two reasons, I just don't know which reason yet. Either I'm going to need to breathe out my nose so that I can learn to sleep with this mask for the rest of my life, or once I can breathe through my nose at night... my sleep apnea will disappear. I'm hoping for the latter, because I really didn't like that mask!

Parker's Blessing Day

We had Parkers blessing on Oct. 14, 2007. He was by far the biggest baby blessed. We were going to do it last month, but ended up being out of town at Craig and Julies cabin. So he was 2 months old, to the day, and weighed almost 15 pounds. He knew that we was the king of the day and he acted like it too. We want to thank Oma (Theresa) for making the booties for Parkers blessing. You can't really tell from the picture, but they are actually the same size! Good job mom! I think the blessing went well. We had a lot more people come than I thought would be able to. I don' t know if there is an unwritten rule about how many people to have in the circle, but I think we were maxing it out. Either way there was a lot of priesthood and a lot of faith there. Parker is one blessed little boy. It was so great to have everyone's support and love. Our house isn't quite big enough for 50 people, but we made it work. I think everyone had enough to eat, just not enough room to sit!

Trip to Costa Mesa California

I had a business trip to Costa Mesa California for a few days in the middle of the week. So Amanda and I decided that it would be fun if both her and Parker came along for the trip. We decided to stay an extra few days so that we could spend some time together. Parker did wonderful on the plane and everywhere else we dragged him. He's a natural traveler.

It just so happened that Dave and Tiffany (our really good friends) were trying to find someone to go to California with sometime in October. Tiffany really wanted to go "The Price is Right". Since I had the business conference over there we just decided to make one big trip out of it. It turned out really well! We thought Dave and Tiff had a good chance of getting caIlled up on the game show... mostly because we've had two friends that have gone, made it up, and even won the showcase showdowns. Unfortunately they didn't get called up, but I think they had fun! We ate at some delicious restaurants and saw some beautiful country! It was a trip well worth it! We thought about going to Disneyland, but decided that we'd wait until the kids were a bit older. The kids were great! I think their little girl Rian was falling for Parker, or maybe it was the other way around. Only time will tell.

He's just an all around good kid!

If all of our kids will turn out like Parker has, we are going to end up having at least 10. The 9 months of pregnancy went much better than planned, add the labor that Amanda was champ through, and then look at what a good baby Parker's been so far, I think we are supposed to have a lot of kids.

Parker is also a very strong baby. He weighs a lot, but he doesn't look chubby, he's just all around BIG. Parker is in the 95 percentile for his height, weight, and head size. He's a trooper, by six weeks old, he's already been to 3 football games, and he's loved them. I think he's eyeing the tight end position.

We grew by one on August 14, 2007

Our family finally grew by one more on Aug. 14th, 2007. The due date for Parker was officially August 9th, but he must have liked the environment that mom provided him. Because Parker was so big and Amanda was progressing so well during the last trimester, our doctor said that he would for sure be two or three weeks early. We know now that is the worst thing that you can tell two parents who are so stinkin' excited to see have their baby. Not only did he not come early... but he was 5 days late, but it felt like 3 weeks late. We went to the hospital about 10:30 am for our scheduled induction. Amanda wanted to feel what it was like to start out natural and then have the anesthesiologist on call at moments notice. As soon as Dr. Bowman broke her water and started her on pitocin (12:00 pm), she started having contractions and called on the anesthesiologist about 30 minutes later (12:30 pm).The epidural was much appreciated and the rest of the labor went very smooth. Parker was born at 4:33 pm and was 8 lbs 9 oz and 22 inches long. He had a full head of dark hair, which was totally unexpected. His hands and feet were huge, just like his Dad's, which was expected. And he looked just like Amanda's baby picture which was an answer to my prayer! He was perfectly healthly and strong and so was Amanda. We were all so blessed to have gone through this and am so greatful for the the new addition to our family.

Here's how it's gonna go down!

Welcome to our family website! We'll try to keep everyone abreast of all the happenings in our family by this blog. Because we lead such an oh so interesting life, we'll post some our favorite pictures and video's as well. In case you are aching for even more pictures of the Parkster or our family, you can look at almost all of our pictures as we post them on an online photoalbum. The website is "www.thecollinsgang.myphotoalbum.com". Enjoy!