Pictures galore

Trace's 1 month birthday!

OOPS, ended up in the water all night

K had so fun at the trunk-or-treat

Trace was kinda a pumpkin... orange top with green pants! There are 2 small pumpkins to the right of Keani, the white little one was for T and the other was Keani (she picked them out).

Tinkerbell

Caught a big smile on camera... even though this picture doesn't really look like him, I liked the smile

Keani was a leopard last year for Halloween and still fit her costume... B wanted her to be a leopard again so she was for the neighborhood Halloween party - but then our friend gave us her daughters old tinkerbell costume that she wanted to be for Halloween night

Keani loves bathtime

Trace is 1 month old!

Keani always says, "silly Trace"

Sleeping like a baby (for the photo only haha) 16 days young!

This is the day before Trace was born, over a month ago, but it was so funny how Keani would copy me and say she "has a big tummy too!"

The BOY story

Okay, so our ultrasound girl said she thought it was going to be a girl, but obviously she is a he! I kinda wonder if the ultrasound girl checked good because she was a bit mad when we asked the gender, she said, "It's so sad how all the parents want to know the sex of the baby, but don't ask if there's anything wrong with him/ her." But of course we care if there's something wrong with the baby too! We just assume the baby is healthy and that the Dr. will tell us if there's any concerns... Anyways, I wasn't allowed to look at the screen through the entire ultrasound and she told us we couldn't talk/ ask questions until she was done. After she did her thing and took some pictures, she showed me a few things and said the three bumps signified it was a girl. But to me, it totally looked like a hotdog, not a hamburger bun. I wondered throughout the pregnancy if we were having a boy because I was only sick for 14 weeks and carried a lot higher, whereas with Keani I was sick for 7 months and carried low. Also, whenever people would ask if we had a girl name picked out and I said, "Taylor", it never sounded right. I guess it's easy to say all this looking back now.

This labor/ delivery went pretty quickly. I started having semi-painful contractions at 1pm on Friday, Sept. 26 so started timing them for the next 2 hours and they were consistently 4-7 min. apart so I told Brett it was time to go to the hospital. He said, "okay, let me jump in the shower" and I was thinking out of all the times to shower you pick now??? (For those of you who know Brett, you know how much he cares about being clean :)). Anyways, the contractions were pretty painful so after B showered and got ready, we headed to the hospital and got there about 3:45pm. We checked in at the ER where we were suppossed to and they were out of wheelchairs so I told them I could walk, but they told me to wait... so then when I got to the examining room, they found out I was already dilated to like a 5 cm and now the contractions were pretty strong. I wanted an epidural, but they said they had to clean out a labor/ delivery room... so for the next few hours, I labored in the examining room -- the resident did an ultrasound, but said he was so far down that she couldn't estimate his weight... frankly I didn't really care b/c I just wanted the epidural! At about 6 ish I finally got the epidural even though I was already a 8-9 cm. I only had to push for half an hour, but he was also vacuum-assisted out b/c everytime I was pushing, his heart rate would drop. So... b/c he was vaccum assisted out, he had to be taken straight to the bassinet thingy with all the Dr.'s therefore we didn't see him... a few seconds later, one of the residents came back and said, "Did you know it was a boy?" Brett was like, "WHAT!?" and went over to look at him, I was like, "huh??? I'm glad he's out, what's going on?" The resident then went to look at the ultrasound pictures b/c she was like, "I wonder what the ultrasound girl was looking at" BUT dundundun... there was no gender picture. The resident said that was wierd that the ultrasound girl didn't take a picture of the sex, but owells --

We are happy for our little Trace William, he's a good baby!

More Week 1 Pics of Trace

Here's some more. The one where Trace has buckets on his head is when Keani was sharing with him, she's so loving.

Trace William McDonald

Our new boy arrived last week (Friday Sept. 26). Keani figured he was just on loan for a while.

Newport Beach

Time is flying! We've been living here in Newport Beach for almost a month and it is a beautiful place (This is a picture in front of our apartments at Park Newport). It has been so nice to have daddy's workplace less than a mile away and for B to not have homework! He is enjoying his summer associateship with O'Melveny & Myers. It's not bad being taken out to eat for lunch every single day for a couple of hours at yummy, yummy places. :)

Keani does miss her friends at the University Village, but today we went on a fieldtrip with our little "Newport Mommies" group to tour a fire station. Unfortunately all the pictures taken by the firetruck were blurry, but here's one waiting in the firestaion living room before the tour. It was pretty cool, they demonstrated the 100 foot latter and we got to see a firefighter climb all the way to the top AND watch them slide down the fire pole... Keani kept saying, "WOW" "Whooo".





Keani's favorite outfit is this red kimono (from Gma Su-Lo) and her purple crocks with a butterfly on them (from Aunty Shawna and Taj). Because she doesn't have as many playmates here as she did in LA, Keani is always making sure her baby (she calls Bebee) and pink carebear and pooh bear are included in whatever we do... reading books together, putting them under her pack-n-play to take a nap when it's naptime, etc.


Keani was being quiet for a while so I checked on what she was up to and she had taken her dishes from her drawer in the kitchen, one by one, to her room. Then she took utensils and put a utensil in each of her bowls/ cups and was so proud of doing it all by herself.

Black Eye Baby

Last Sunday night Keani tripped and hit her eye on the edge of our glider/ rocker and had a big swollen black eye... it was so sad. The first night she could barely even open her eye. It's getting better, hopefully in time for JV's wedding on Saturday. This one lady was like, "it's good that you're not that protective of her"... and to see people at the park look and wonder what happened to her -- but owells, all part of this little body, big personality gal :). Sorry it's blurry - that's how our broken camera is currently operating - boo.

Keani Pictrures

We thought we needed more pictures on our blog... kinda old pictures, but since our camera is still taking blurry pictures, we thought these would work. Top to bottom: 10 months going to church, a leopard for Halloween (11 months), 6 months crawling around, 11 months again.

Okay, so we're really behind for a few reasons, first off -- We're slackers, secondly, our camera is broken and so we haven't taken pictures since Christmas (once again slackers for not fixing it/ getting another camera by now). Thirdly, just figuring out all the cool little things to add to our blog (ie. new background -- thanks to the dance family blog link) adding our friends as links on our page. We are very excited to see whoever will be there in 2 weeks for JV and Paul's wedding!

Keani is still a joy! Loves life and everything about it (except bumping her head or putting the bubbles away). Last night she woke up at 130 am and after getting her, she looked at me and kept asking to play bubbles! She must've been dreaming of them in her sleep or something. She loves to roar like a lion and jump (kinda) and calls everything "kohl", we don't know if she's trying to say cool??? She's also a wonderful mommy/ friend to her baby doll that she pushes in her stroller, feeds, bathes and puts diapers on. You know I could go on and on heehee, but I'll spare you! Aloha!

O'Melveny & Myers

As some of you know, I've accepted a position with the law firm "O'Melveny & Myers" for this summer and beyond. Som, K and I will be joining their Newport Beach office (I just loved my high school too much to go anywhere else).

You can check out the firm here: http://www.omm.com/

Click on "Offices" and choose "Newport Beach" for a pic of the office and description of the practice. As you can see, some of our clients in Newport include Pac Sun and Quicksilver, I'll let you know if I can get some free gear.

First Blog Ever

Hi everyone,
I don't really know what I'm doing yet, but really wanted to keep in touch better with everyone and I know blogging is such a good way to do so (since nobody likes myspace heehee). Hope to get in contact with old friends and family living far away ( I know, we're the ones who moved far away, but So. Cal isn't too far)... we'll see how this goes :)