Happy Holidays!

Life has been a whirlwind and I don't expect it to slow down anytime soon! Since I left off way back in September, dance classes and preparation for our production of The Nutcracker took off in full swing, we visited family in Seattle, celebrated Colette's 3rd Birthday, Nick turned 33 and I've entered the third trimester!

The beginning of October Colette and I went to Seattle for my cousin's wedding and got lots of wonderful family time. After all the wedding festivities we stayed in downtown Seattle for a few extra days to take in the sights of the big city! Ferris Wheels, carousels, Pike's Market, Bainbridge ferry, the Chihuly Glass Museum and fancy hotels - it was a blast!

Our little toddler is now a big girl! 3 years old and very proud of it. We celebrated her birthday with a very Pink Party and some of her friends. Her favorite things these days include counting, talking about colors, telling stories of riding on unicorns, and anything pink, fairy and princess. Her personality has bloomed with her 3rd birthday, she's lively and social, creative and imaginative, thoughtful and caring. We are also officially potty trained, "because big girls wear panties." As with all her other milestones, this one was not going to happen until she wanted it to and until she knew that she could do it right. She has also recently started talking about going to school and dance classes, so mommy can teach her ballet. She will start both things next fall, but has friends a little older who are already enrolled. Colette is very excited to be a big sister and for the arrival of her baby brother. HER Baby Brother. She is quite possessive of him and for now we figure that's a good thing!

Colette's PINK Birthday party, here with her bestie Jillian

Showing her cousin Audrey how fun it is to hide in the cabinets

Greeting our Opening Night Audience!

This year's Nutcracker was our biggest and best production yet. With a cast of over 145 students (including over 30 boys!) and guest appearance by Kaili's brother, Brent Watkins as Herr Drosselmeyer, we sold out all 3 three shows and received outstanding support from our little island community. Needless to say it was an exhausting effort, but extremely rewarding.

If you would like to see more pictures from the show, please check out our MDT Studio Facebook page where parents have posted many great shots! And here's my interview with our local radio station if you're interested. KFSK, Nutcracker Ballet

That's a lot of belly!

Cast of the "Party Scene" - (not the full cast!)

In Baby news, Baby Boy Boggs is doing well, and both mommy and baby are growing as expected. True to convention, I'm bigger this time around and carrying the baby lower and straight out like a basketball. He is one busy guy in there, much more so than I remember with Colette, but I have also been much busier this time! Little things I've learned about him are that he loves music and chocolate, and the sound of his big sister's voice.

Tickets are purchased and we will begin our journey to Tucson on January 10 and I plan to deliver at the same birth center. Colleen will be joining us from North Carolina and I expect we will spend a little bit of time in Phoenix to see family and friends before baby arrives and head back home.

I've had lots of friendly people in town ask if I'm glad the show is over and things are returning to normal . . . which is a nice thought but not exactly the case! I'm still at work these days, juggling the hustle and bustle of Christmas like everyone else, and preparing to leave home in 3 weeks to go have a baby, only to return home to whole new "normal". It may be a bit chaotic, but it's my wonderful life and we're just getting ready for a new chapter.

Campfires and Hot Chocolate

Smiles on a cold, sunny day

Visiting with Santa

Ultrasounds and Announcements

Another month has flown by already. This pregnancy seems to be going by pretty fast and I'm sure it has nothing to do with chasing around a toddler. Or that I just did a whirlwind trip to Denali National Park. Or that dance just started back up for the semester. Or that we're in the process of finally selling our condo. Or that Nick has been in and out of town for various dr. appointments and guard drills. Or that one of my closest friends (and co-dance teacher) is also pregnant and we're 1 week apart. I suppose we keep pretty busy!

4 months

Yesterday I went to visit a lady in town who does predictions on a baby's sex. She uses a needle and thread trick where you hold it over your hand, palm facing down. Some theory that the needle picks up the magnetism in your blood. If the needle swings in a circle you're having a girl, if it swings back and forth in a line your having a boy. We did it three times, just for fun, and each time it went back and forth, like a pendulum! So according to this very scientific prediction, we're having a boy. She cheerfully says that she is about 77% right, although that is not an accurate statistic either. (And just for the record . . . last time around the needle also indicated a boy!)

Baby's head is toward the right side, looking upward

But today was my mid-pregnancy ultrasound! Slightly more scientific and accurate. Of course finding out the sex is just the icing on the cake - for those of us who want to know! First and foremost it serves a medical purpose, checking on the baby's growth, stomach, kidney's, spine, and brain and the placement of the placenta. Baby looks to be doing well and I have a follow up appointment with the Doctor on Friday after the radiologist checks out all the pictures.

And now . . Drum Roll Please . . . . . .

 

Look at the left side; a tushie, two legs, and a penis in between!

IT'S A BOY!!

I am blown away by this. I was positive that this baby was a girl and that we would have a house full of girls, Nick thought so too, just our lot in life. And a house full of sisters would be A-Okay. But now. Now we'll need to get all new clothes. And buy some of those pee-pee tee-pee things. And clear out the pink stuff. Well, some of it. I think this boy will be dressed up by his big sister for a few years and that's just the way it is! Colette came along for the ultrasound. She was a lot more interested in my belly and the special goo all over it than anything to do with the actual baby, but she did great and I'm glad we were all there together. 

Last week I went to the interior of this tremendous state with a few co-workers. We got to do a FAM trip, travel agent familiarization. We stayed at places where we book our clients and traveled the same way we set it up for them. It's one part to make sure that we are sending them to good places and that things work smoothly, and one part to give us the personal experience so we know what we're talking about. We started in Fairbanks, took the Alaska Railroad to Denali National Park, did a flight-seeing tour and a bus tour into the park, then the Alaska Railroad to Anchorage. The weather was beautiful for the entire trip and we were treated to rare views of Mt. McKinley in it's entirety. Stunning. Breathless. 

Beginning our first train ride from Fairbanks to Denali

  

Viking Travel Agents: Anne Volk, me, Shannon Foley with Mt. McKinley in the background

Although our trip was positively amazing, it was also exhausting! We were up early to catch trains, planes and automobiles for various tours and transfers and afterwards we had to do "work" like sampling the best places to recommend for dinner. In truth we also had to go check out other hotel properties and make new business connections so we were considerably busier than our clients would be!

Anne and Shannon enjoying some wine at "Cabin Night Dinner Theater"

Our dance performance this year will be the Nutcracker. We haven't done the show in 3 years, and that last one was the semester I took off when I had Colette. I'm very excited to do it again but it has been a trick figuring out our season schedule with two pregnant dance teachers and very large classes.

Summer in Alaska this year was very wet and rather chilly but September has given us some beautiful weather. We've been treated to sunny skies and warm temperatures (in the 70s!) so we've taken advantage of it and headed out the road for picnics and an afternoon up Petersburg Creek with Joey, Helen and Audrey.

And our "Little Miss Baby Boggs" is growing up so quickly! Her 3rd Birthday is in October and we're making plans for her "Pink Party." She has recently entered a new phase, one where she is constantly busy . . and constantly talking. I know it's just my karma, but the girl chatters nonstop! Mostly it's adorable, but not so much at 3:30am when she feels like it's a great time to chit chat. She'll climb into bed, sit up and just launch into something like we're having a tea party. She also likes to tell stories at more appropriate times and sing songs, some real and some made up. We're entering a new era of pretend play and interaction with friends which is really exciting to see. Our toddler is becoming a little kid and a big sister.

My sweet almost-3-year-old!

And Life Rolls On . . .

Surprise!! A new blog post! Yep, it still exists, sitting here dormant almost 2 years but I did manage to figure out my login and how to create a new post. So here I am, ready to share a long overdue update on the Boggs family.

I'll do a Cliff Notes version for a few of the big things that have happened.

Our first day in Hawaii, on the balcony in Honolulu

December 2012 we spent two weeks in Hawaii over Christmastime. Yes, we spent Christmas with a 1-year old on vacation, and we didn't have a tree, we didn't have piles of presents, and Colette didn't know she was missing anything. What we did have was lots of time to spend together as a family, no worries about work, beautiful scenery and hidden coves, and the opportunity to eat as much ahi as we could manage. We spent a week on Oahu, in Honolulu and Ko Olina, then a week on Kauai. Colette wasn't really sure about the sand but we had lovely weather and made the most of it.

Colette and Daddy testing out the sand and water

Ko Olina lagoons

See, we found Santa (and he wasn't even scary)

Military Man, handsome isn't he?!

When we returned from that trip, we started getting information that Nick was being deployed with the National Guard to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for up to a year. Not only was this crushing, unexpected news that I had no idea how to process or what on Earth Colette and I were going to do without him, but deployment was set for around September 1. This gave us almost an entire year to fret and stress over it, but very little in the way of answers to our millions of questions. The next 8 months saw Nick traveling to Anchorage every few weeks for "trainings", sometimes gone for longer stretches then he was at home in between.

Return home from a training. Happy Girl. Happy Dad.

May 2013 Colleen came for a visit after she returned to the States from Thailand. We had three weeks of sister/auntie/niece time and it coincided with a 3-week training that took Nick to Anchorage and my spring dance show. Over the last 2 years or so I've been dancing with a group of ladies (including the other teachers at my studio) and we performed too! It's so fun to be in costume and on the stage again. Our students get a big kick out of seeing us backstage all dressed up and performing with them. Besides doing it just because we love it, it's nice to think that we're proving to these kids that dance is something you can do your entire life, not just while you're in school. They don't have many opportunities here to see "grown-ups" (yikes) performing on stage and we're all happy to oblige.

Kathleen, Kaili and Olivia

 






















By July 2013 we were ready for another vacation "off the rock" and a chance for us to be together before deployment. We pulled together a quick trip to San Francisco and a wonderful little coastal town just south of the city called Half Moon Bay. We spent our time on the chilly, windy beaches, swimming at hotel pools, wandering through the maze of attractions and people in SF, and of course, eating delicious food. (If you're not aware, our little community is seriously lacking in dining choices so although we can make some pretty amazing seafood meals at home, that also means dishes and very little opportunity to try some new creative dish, prepared and cleaned up by someone else . . . so eating is an important part of vacation for us. Luckily Colette is totally on board with this and she even likes to try those new things too!)

A little beach time in Half Moon Bay

Wine for Mom and Dad, juice for Colette

Uhg. San Francisco.

A little hotel time and a bare buttski!

During this vacation Nick started having a lot of pain in his back (above and beyond what he lives with everyday) and a very worrisome loss of strength in his left leg. He went to the doctor here right when we got back and through many complicated dr visits, flights to Juneau and Anchorage, incompetency within the workings of the National Guard, and many other frustrations that no longer bear repeating, Nick has some serious back issues including 4 bulged discs and was taken off the Cuba deployment. Yay!! Wait, . . that's really serious. And fast forward 1 full year, we're still dealing with this, but things are finally progressing (albeit still slowly) and some big medical decisions will need to be made very soon. On a related note, Nick's buddies from the Guard are home now and reunited with their families. Turns out they spent a lot of time being hot and bored down there but I'm happy for each of them that they're back.

Checking out her Birthday Crown

 

Wow right? But what about Colette, that's what you really want to know about! October 16, 2013 we celebrated our baby girl's 2nd birthday. Friends came over (with their parents) for her fishy-themed party. We had yummy snacks and colored pictures; the tots fished for goodie bags from the kiddie pool and we ate cupcakes, the one and only thing Colette was truly interested in. I told her she couldn't have a cupcake until all her friends where there, so when that happened she immediately told me asked me, "It's time for cupcakes now?" So we did the birthday song and candles part first. Which if you think about it works out pretty well - give the kids the sugar at the beginning of the party, they all run around having a blast and when the sugar crash, meltdown phase begins, it's time to go home!

Birthday girl and me

Presents time . .  and sharing a loving laugh with Dad

Coloring, Cupcakes and Jello!

Serious cupcake business

 

Christmas morning cruise

Christmas 2013 we spent at home together and had an evening get together with Nick's family. Colette's first cousin, Audrey, was born September 29 so it's fun to have another little one around. Now the girls are in daycare together and LOVE each other. They crack each other up and can sit around laughing hysterically while the rest of us are clueless to what was so funny, but we end up joining in the laughter because it's contagious. Anywho . . the day after Christmas, Colette and I packed up our things and headed for Arizona. Our trip included 2nd Christmas with Kevin, Trish, Grammy and Papa (Mary and Mark, of course. Although Colette is very clear that she has "2 Grammys and 2 Papas" these are the names for both of them. We're tying to add the first names on but she always seems to know who we're referring to anyway. Smart cookie. Too smart sometimes . . . I see some battles in our future . . .) Colleen also came to Tucson during this time and we all spent a few days in Phoenix where we got to shop and visit my college girlfriends and their growing families. We took a few trips to Casa Grande to see Grandma Burke, time that I will always be grateful that we had. Colette put together that she was Papa's Mommy, although she was quite shy around all the extra people.
 

Morning coffee with Grammy

 

Love ya sis

Snuggles and Giggles

Tucson Zoo with Papa - it was great!

May 2014 and it's time for another dance performance and Mom's first time to come see one! We had just over a week visit and we timed it so she could come to the show. It was fun having her here to see my work, and to see me perform again. This time around our show was "Once Upon A Time" and we took some creative liberties with popular fairy tales. Our adult group was marionette's to a version of "I Got No Strings". If you'd like, here's a link to a parent's video of our dance.

During a sunny picnic with friends

Hot dogs and marshmellows

Kathleen, Caroline, Kaili, Sonja, Andrea and Olivia as marionettes

Happy Gramma with all her babies (Nick, Joey, Sara, Colette, Audrey)

Earlier this summer we also had a nice visit with Gramma (Sara) from Minnesota. The way Colette says Minnesota is up on the list of the cutest things ever. Gramma got to spend lots of time with both her grandbaby girls and while we expected Nick to gone for much of her visit, he actually got to be home too! I sure wish we could have both our Grammy's around everyday, not only do they make life easier on Mom and Dad, Colette 'loves my Grammy soooooo much' and they both happen to be really awesome people that I miss, all the time.

You see those faces?! Uncontrollable laughter

 Sara's visit was doubly appreciated because the timing turned out to be quite wonderful. Those weeks during her visit I was just exceptionally tired and lazy so someone needed to keep up with Colette. That first trimester sure can be rough!

First Ultrasound at 10 weeks

 That's right! There's a new Baby Boggs in there! I'm 14 weeks now and baby is the size of a cupcake! (or a lemon, but this baby is requesting carbs and sweets in high demand so I feel like a cupcake is more appropriate.) In general I'm feeling better but so far this pregnancy has been quite different than the first and poor Nick has probably already handled more irrational mood swings than the entire 40 weeks last time around. Luckily, he has a little experience now too. Oh, and the mood swings of a 2.5 half year old. Those are fun! Not to mention that one of us is usually the cause of the other's crazy reaction. I imagine it's kind of like having 2 teenage girls in the house . . . maybe less use of the word "like" but equally as dramatic and ridiculous.

We don't know the baby's sex yet, still another 6 weeks or so before we reach that milestone, but yes we'll find out. Nick is pretty sure that it'll be a girl, although hopeful for a boy. And I flip flop just about every day; positive it's a girl and then thinking it really might be boy. It's safe to say we'll be happy either way and Colette is very excited with the idea of being a big sister.

I hope I hit at least most of the major events from the past two years and I have the intent to post occasionally again. For now, here's a few more recent pictures of less-significant, but happy times.