Christmas pictures...and more.

Are you all set for Christmas? Beau is, as you can tell! I need to find him a big knuckle bone that will make him happy for a day or two.
Tomorrow night we're doing our Bethlehem dinner, which should be fun. Hope you're starting a new tradition, such as buying a new ornament, getting Finn his first ornament...things like that.

Brother Bohne came by Sunday to home teach and was asking about our Christmas traditions. It's nice to have just a few to carry on each year. He also talked about his favorite Christmas. He said you would naturally think it was one where they gave gifts, serve to someone needy, etc. But his was the Christmas right after they moved here, where money was very tight. In fact, he knew that the kids would maybe only get one present, due to the help of his mother-in-law. He was very down and suddenly, Christmas Eve, someone rang the doorbell. He opened the door, and there on the step were a few boxes filled with many presents, and a few bags filled with enough food for an entire feast for Christmas Day. At first he was upset, thinking.. 'What! Do they not think I can take care of my own!?" But as they day wore on, the true spirit of Christ entered his heart and made him feel things he had never felt before. The purest sense of gratitude for the Savior came over him, making that Christmas stand out more than any other.
He challenged us all to do something for someone, even visit an elderly person in the ward, but do something before Christmas that will put that light in someone else's eyes.
It was a good lesson.
Have a Merry Christmas, and may the light of Christ burn in your heart for all the Lord has blessed you with.
Love, Mom

THIS IS SNOW!

Hey! This is snow Jason! Look what you two are missing... well... you three now. haha
Hope your baby slept better last night.

Love, Mom

Finn’s Here!

Well the day finally came, it was only 10 days later than predicted. Finn was born on December 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 a.m. There’s lots of stuff I could write about this but there’s not much time since I do have a new baby. I’ll save some of the stories for Ellynn since she’s more talkative than me anyways. I’m gonna put in a bunch of the pictures for you guys to see. For the complete album of pictures taken so far go to Finn’s Delivery in my Picasa albums. Here’s a few of the best ones to tide you over till then.

Willmore… Jason Willmore (cue Bond music)

Charcoal Grey

Blue Pinstripe

So we went and picked up the suits that dad bought for me yesterday. I tried them on last night when we got back and we snapped some pictures of em. The charcoal grey one is the italian cut, oober fancy one. The other one is a blue suit with a nice pinstripe in it. I think dad said the blue one is the same kind or similar to what Jared got for his. So we’ll have to wear em at the same time and play mafia next time we’re in town. I’ll be wearing the blue suit today to  church (Ellynn says it’s more “Autumy”). We’ll only be going to sacrament today because Ellynn’s still got that little meatloaf in her belly, well he’s probably not that little. They hooked her up to an ultrasound machine and a heart monitor for about an hour total yesterday at the hospital. The ultrasound tested to see how much amniotic fluid is left in her uterus. She was half a percentage above the allowable amount. They said if it were a couple points lower they may have considered inducing a little bit more but what she had was fine for a while. The nurse did have to go get a doctor to help with the ultrasound because as she said, “There’s just a lot of baby in there!” For the last half hour they hooked her up to a heart monitor for the baby and a muscle monitor for her abdominal wall checking for contractions. The baby’s heartbeat started off fairly slow. The doctor said that a slow heart rate might cause concern and maybe that would make them induce. Slow heart rates also can mean sleeping babies. As soon as she mentioned that Finn’s heart rate jumped right up to where it should be normally and stayed there till the test was over…despite Ellynn yelling at him the whole time to slow it down. Our next appointment is on Tuesday where they’ll do the same check all over again and if by Friday he hasn’t come then they’ll induce her.

Along with the baby stuff we had 2 families worth of relatives in town. One stayed with us and the other split between a hotel and Ellery and LeAnne’s place. In all the whole group here in Battle Ground was around or over 30 people. We did thanksgiving at the church in the cultural hall which was really nice because the billions of kids had plenty of room to run around. We ended the night with a fun game of volleyball that Ellynn played till the end. Everyone was sure that would push her into labor but they, like everyone else, underestimate this kid.

Well that was about all for our week and weekend. We’ll keep you all posted over the next week. Bye!

 

Halloween in Washington

So halloween here was pretty cool. Washington has some pretty cool fog that rolls in at night and with all the trees it looks straight out of a scary movie. Ellynn dressed up in her witch costume again and even added some eye make-up. She made a scary face for this picture and it turned out pretty cool.

Ellynn told mom a little bit about our halloween night walk that we did. We had planned the day before halloween to go have a picnic along this one trail that you can walk by the church. It’s a pretty dense forest trail that has a lake with some picnic tables by it. We went out there with some subway sandwiches to eat. Ellery and Leanne had gotten out there ahead of us and lined the trail with candles and put candles all over the picnic area. So it was pitch black everywhere else except the lighted parts on the trail. It was pretty cool. Everyone wants to make that a halloween tradition. It’d be a pretty easy one to do every year.

and here’s some pictures of the sunday walk we went on today.  the trees looked really cool.

Ellynn even stole the kids candy…well she just whined ‘cuz she got the ring pop.

Fun Times....

Here are some Halloween pictures and a few random ones. Jess was a mad scientist..she had to dress up 3 times for different events. Her friend Karl... you remember Karl? He's at our front door with the witch that hangs out there. hehe. He came over to go trick or treating with Jess & her friends. ahhhhh....
And Justin is just being Justin.... He found these in the closet and decided to go all conehead on us. This was during the crazy BYU game... I guess he was getting rid of the stress or trying to cover his ears from his dad's yelling. haha Then there's Janae's gorgeous picture Ady took of her. She actually took quite a few. This will be the one that hangs in the living room.
Hope you had a good Halloween!
Love, Mom

Shower commentary by Ellynn

I’m finally getting around to posting which Jason did 2 days ago. He's way more on top of it than i am. It really was a blast though. It ended up being more like a Halloween party than a baby shower which is my idea of a good time! We had a couple games planned but there were just way too many people to even play them. we did play “how big is mama’s belly”. i’ve decided that this is not a good game to play. All but 3 people over-guessed by at least a foot. i’m not even gonna comment on that. but that’s cool.

As Mom said it was a monumental effort to put the shower on but i think i get the gold medal for my brownies. the brownies that never even got served. This probably gets the silver medal.

Jason spent a good 3 hours helping me make the invites. and by helping me i mean i was taking a nap during most of it.

The bronze medal is a three way tie between Darla making the amazing pumpkin soup which we served out of a real pumpkin. Mom with her costume and aunt Joanie’s chocolate-dipped gingersnaps and Cory and Dad doing everything behind the scenes.

Okay so the brownies. Meagan actually deserves half the medal for putting up with and helping me. So i have this amazing brownie recipe with Hershey’s special dark european cocoa. (freaking amazing by the way). I’m adding the last ingredient to this delectable mix when somehow i misconstrue 2 cups with 8 cups. That’s right EIGHT! don’t even ask me how something that stupid happens but it did. luckily we had 24 EXTRA eggs on hand so we could fix the problem. So 3 boxes of cocoa, 32 eggs and a serious test of Meagan’s and my math skills later we have sugar all over the floor and 8 batches of brownie mix. They never got served because by the time we got 2 pans baked, they didn’t have enough time to cool so we could put the frosting on. i still don’t know what on earth we’re going to do with all of it.

This picture doesn’t have much to do with anything except that i love it! Please also notice the color of the walls in the back ground. Meagan spent the better part of 3 days painting her living room so it would be done in time for the shower. Mom and Cory were a huge help and i’m an awesome supervisor/hole finder. The shower was the first time most people in the ward had seen Meag’s house and EVERYONE was very impressed. it really is fantastic.

From all reports everyone had a good time and a couple of them even said it was the funnest baby shower they’ve ever been to. Can’t beat that. So in the end it was worth all the effort. Especially since be scored enough cash to pay for our dresser, order our stroller and still get a few essentials we really need.

The baby finally took…er got a shower!

Well this is gonna  be another picture extravaganza. There was a lot that went on last night and Ellynn had a lot of fun from the sounds of it. They invited about 40 people and all but 3 r.s.v.p’d and eventually showed up. So it was a happenin’ party. Lots of cool pictures to post. I’ll put pictures with a short explanation and I'm sure Ellynn will give you a more in depth coverage later.

So plenty of costumed women filled Meagan and Cory’s house. From what I hear the men had fled to other sanctuaries to wait out the storm.

The Rocker and the Japanese outfit got first and second best costumes respectively for the party.

Lots of food at the party.

 

This is Julia, Brind’s wife, she made some way cool cakes that we’ll show you pictures of later. She works at target and got us a few gifts from our registry so they did a lot for the shower.

This is Meagan’s 80’s aerobics instructor costume.

Bennett was a cowgirl.

 

Darla was an 80’s prom queen. Can you tell we like to rag on the 80’s? Who doesn’t though…such an easy target, kinda like that slow kid in dodge ball. Hehe.

This is Leanne’s Ghoul Bride costume. She has a lot of cool costumes stored from years past and has the makeup for some pretty cool costumes. This is one of Ellynn’s favorites.

Ellynn was a witch…for the party…not referring to general mood. Hehe. She said this picture was flattering, not to mention she’s holding a roll of cash there which is all gonna be spent on our new stroller.

These are the cakes Julia made. Everyone said they should be in a Martha Stewart Catalog. They were very creative. She’s a pretty good cook. We’ve only suckered her into cooking dinner for us once so far. Brind had an idea to make the inside of one of the bellies out of red Jell-O and to put a plastic baby in it so that as you cut into it the red Jell-O gushed out. Pretty creative and totally a Brind idea as Ellynn said. Julia just stuck with cake batter for all three though so people could actually have something to eat.

Ellynn was on her feet for a lot of the day. She had a Relief Society service project in the morning and then lots of preparation for the part in the afternoon. All this led to some very swollen ankles by the end of the day. Ellynn had to document the event for posterity.

Here’s some of the gifts we got, at least the ones that I could easily snap a pic of. People brought some very nice and very creative gifts. It was really nice to get a lot of these things and to not have to worry about having to go buy this now. It was a big help.

This is the Diaper Champ. From what we hear it’s the best thing for throwing away diapers and not having it smell bad. It never really lets air out, kinda has the nuclear waste disposal feel to it which is what diaper changing feels like sometimes…

This was a diaper cake. At least that’s how Ellynn explained it. This gift was very creative. Diapers were wrapped into layers (like a cake) and topped with various lotions, towels and other baby items.

This is a pile of the smaller items and bags we got. Diapers, wipes, some good books, bathrobes, and lots of others things. I haven’t had time to go through everything yet but there were lots of cool useful gifts.

This is the monitor system we signed up for at target. It has the receiver and then two speaker systems that you can set up. Both the speaker systems have lights that signal noise volume so you can tell just by looking at it if there’s noise. These were also recommended to us and are supposed to be very good.

And this is the sweet baby grooming kit from Target. Lots of good stuff in there for first time parents and it’s all neatly put together in one kit which is nice.

So that was the whole shebang. Ellynn is gonna post later and tell all about the shower and different funny things that happened. This post was mainly so you could see all the pictures she took and get a good feel for what went on. Thanks for all your help and support as this baby has grown!

Animal House!

So, we're inundated with animals here! We have Beau (I call him Bandit), who is a handful but very lovable. And then the happy couple, Charlie & Jack. They're buds.
Beau tries to steal the cat food. He does this little stealth move by sneaking up to it, grabbing a mouth full and then running under the table. It's actually quite humorous which is why I call him 'The Bandit." But it's like having a baby in the house again....ohhh... no sleep! Your dad is very attached though and gets after us if we're not doing the correct 'dog whisperer' training. Too cute.

P.S.

The new theme for the blog looks cool. I like the lined paper look behind the text. I’m sure it reminds the kids of their wonderful time in school… hehe.

Baby train’s a comin’!

Ellynn’s belly was pretty big in that shirt so we snapped a picture to give you a good idea of where she’s at. She’s definitely in the “uncomfortably large” stage of pregnancy right now. She’s ready to get this baby out. We’re getting hospital bags ready so we can head out to the hospital if needed anytime over the next month. We took a tour of the hospital she’ll be delivering at and we were very impressed with it. I’ll be taking my camera and laptop bag along on delivery day so we’ll try to get as many pictures as we can and maybe even skype after things are settled down and we’re waiting to be released. (The hospital has free wireless internet). So there’s a little update on us. I’ll keep snapping pictures and update you more later. Take care!

This is a dresser we got so the baby clothes could go in our old one. Ellynn’s in love with it. It only cost 78 bucks so I kinda like it too…

Zion's Vacation

Here's some pictures of our trip down to Zion's. We stayed in Zion's National Resort, outside of the Park. It was beautiful! Our cabin overlooked a field of buffalo, which was really cool to wake up to. The Buffalo Restaurant was incredible.. your dad had elk and buffalo for dinner. The next day we went down to Kanab, which is a fun little, touristy town. A nice, but quick vacation! We decided if we're going to do a Willmore Family Reunion, we'll do it at this resort! They have so many different activities and things close by to do. Maybe next year or the year after! Love you all! mom