Newborn Pictures!

I took some newborn pictures of Elizabeth today. There are a couple that didn't turn out quite as sharp as I would have liked (my lighting was not exactly ideal) but for the most part I really like how they turned out. :) She was very cooperative for me, thankfully!

Enjoy!

Elizabeth's birth...and other stories

The days leading up to Elizabeth's birth were...stressful. On Wednesday the 25th, Will's mom, Annette, (she was staying with us to be there to take the kids when we went to the hospital) took the kids to a movie and Will and I went shopping and then went to Sonic for a drink. Well, at Sonic the car decided not to start up again. It was making weird noises and doing all kinds of strange things with the lights. We decided to try to jump it, but we were in a "stall" at Sonic and not in a great position to do that. We put it in neutral and tried to back it out a bit, but I had a really hard time steering it at all without the power steering, and the brakes froze up - so as the car is moving if I wanted it to stop I had to jam it back into park, which couldn't possibly have been good on the poor car. We got it backed out far enough to work with and a Sonic worker came out to help with his car. Sure enough it started right up. HUGE relief. What with it being a long weekend starting the next day, a huge snowstorm coming the next day/night, and baby coming any time, we really did not want the car in the shop!

Then we headed to Walmart to buy a new battery. The battery they said was the one we needed did not match the one that was in the car, oddly enough. We bought the one they recommended in case we'd had the wrong size in our car all along, and what do you know - the new one fit perfectly, better than the old one. So, problem solved and the car works better than ever.

We finally all got home, and Kaylee was complaining that her throat hurt. Oh well, probably just a little cold or something, no big deal. Nope, she started throwing up a little bit later and threw up for 14 hours. As you can imagine, I was ridiculously stressed out at that point. The day before Thanksgiving, a stomach bug in our house, baby due any time, yikes. I did my best to keep everyone clean and try to avoid it spreading, but anyone with kids knows how hard that can be. Thankfully Annette was there to help and stayed up with Kaylee that night. You know someone is a really great person when they're willing to help with pukey kids that aren't theirs! That helped me out a ton.

We made it to Thanksgiving dinner and had a great meal. The day after Thanksgiving was good too, we went and got a Christmas tree and decorated it. I figured we should do it right away because I knew the baby would be here pretty soon and I wasn't sure I would have the time and energy after that. I also had a doctor's appointment and I was a little sad to only be slightly more dilated than my last appointment. They wanted to induce me on Monday if I hadn't already had her (with being GBS+ and history of fast labors, and already dilated to a 4-5 they thought it would be best). I REALLY did not want to be induced and was hoping she would come sooner anyway.

That night, I started having contractions. I'd already had a couple of "false labors" where it really, truly felt like the real thing, but wasn't. These contractions were regular and getting pretty painful, so at around 1:30am we decided to head to the hospital. I was definitely in labor, and the contractions were hard but they were really far apart the whole time. Up until the very end, they were still 5-6 minutes apart. Normally the end is really intense for me, but I got through it just with controlled breathing and nothing else. I just lay on my side and tried to stay as relaxed as possible. My nurse was awesome, she was British and apparently really liked helping women who wanted to labor naturally. I didn't need a whole lot of help, though. ;) I was amazed when the doctor came in and told me I was fully dilated. It was such a gentle, calm labor. It took longer than I expected it to, but it was easy so I'll definitely take that trade-off! I had them break my water to get going at the end (who knows how long I would be if they hadn't, because the contractions were so far apart), and then it only took a couple of contractions and a few pushes and she was here! She was 8 pounds even, 20.5 inches, born at 7:59am. I think she wanted to make sure the doctor stayed, his shift was over at 8:00. Haha!

Also, a funny coincidence - both Kaylee and Elizabeth's due dates were on a Sunday. I went into labor with both on Friday night before, and had them both in the morning on Saturday, the day before their respective due dates. And then there was Ben, who came like 3 weeks early. Odd one out, I guess. :)

All in all, it was a wonderful delivery and experience in general. I was very impressed with the hospital and the doctors and nurses.

We've had a great first week home, too. Elizabeth is nursing really well (best of the three by FAR) and I am doing well too. The older kids are kind of driving me nuts and acting helpless with everything, but as far as I know that is pretty normal and will hopefully pass soon! *crossing my fingers*

Now we get to see if life is really as crazy with three kids as everyone says it is!

Baby's Room

Well, we are just sitting here waiting for this baby to arrive! My due date is in a week and a half, and although she's shown lots of signs of coming soon, and the doctor told me two weeks ago she would be surprised if she stayed in much longer (WHY do they do that to us? lol) she seems pretty comfortable, so it could easily still be another couple of weeks. We are more ready for this baby than we were for the others though, and I think that makes it harder to wait. I never got to the point where I felt like "get this baby out!" with the others, and I hit that point about a week ago with this one, hah!

I finished her room a month or two ago, and finally got around to taking some pictures. I love it. I'm glad that I finally got to decorate a nursery, and I had so much fun doing it.

Get ready for a picture overload!!

This is her mobile that I made, big thanks to my sister-in-law Tiffany for letting me use her Silhouette to cut out all those butterflies. It took a long time as it was, I can't imagine if I'd bought a paper punch.

This quilt was the first thing I made. I had a lot of fun choosing the colors and pattern. I've never made a quilt like it before and I love how it turned out.

This is just IKEA frames with some stickers and things I bought from Hobby Lobby.

I've been seeing a lot of "string art" around lately and I wanted to try it. So I bought a few boards, put them together and hammered about a million tiny nails into it. Then, made a big string tangle all over it. :) It was fun and pretty easy.

This part was lots of work. I made it all from an idea I had, I didn't have any kind of pattern for it so I just winged it and hoped it would come out the way I pictured. It did! It snaps on and off. I don't have a close-up picture of the matching bed skirt but you can see it in the first picture.

I found this little white and gold bowl on clearance at Target and couldn't resist.

These are just simple paintings that I did to fill in this wall.

And in case you were dying to see this up close, this is the pattern on the curtains. I made these curtains with some inexpensive fabric from Joann's and blackout liners. They work really well to darken the room when needed. I've never made curtains from scratch before and I think they turned out awesome.

And that is all for the nursery. Here is a belly picture...

Feeling huge! Come on, baby!!!

Our busy summer!

It has been a while since I posted anything. I have had a very busy summer and just haven't made time for it! We painted our house and worked on landscaping the yard a little more - which maybe doesn't sound like a whole lot, but it literally took all summer. We love how it looks though. We picked a nice dark gray from Sherwin Williams (Thunderclap) and brightened up all the white trim. Whew! So nice to have it all done!!! Will said, "I'm never painting a house again. While you're pregnant." But I think he might have meant that without the "while you're pregnant" part at all. It really was exhausting, but worth it in my opinion, with saving a few thousand dollars and learning a lot along the way. We had to replace some rotten trim pieces, and there was one length of gutter that had rust holes all over, which we attempted to patch, gave up, and replaced the whole thing. We're pretty happy with our accomplishments. Next year we hope to have the sprinkler system up and running so we can get rid of that pesky hose. :)

The kids loved helping paint!                                                                  

Kaylee is doing great in Kindergarten, and still loving it! She rides the bus every morning which is very convenient for me. I didn't cry the first day of school, but I cried the first day she got on the bus! It was REALLY hard to let her get on that big yellow bus all by herself and trust her to get to class. (I may have followed the bus the first day and spied to make sure she got there. Will thought I was being crazy and over protective...oh well.) Anyway, she absolutely loves riding the bus, and I feel fine about it now. Especially now that I've seen how strict the rules are!

Ben also started school, but just a joy school that I'm doing with some other moms in my ward. It's very casual and fun for the kids, not to mention it will be AWESOME when I'm done with my two weeks of teaching (3 lessons down, 1 to go!), and helping, and then I'll have 4 hours a week all by myself. That will help immensely with my desire to get Christmas shopping completely out of the way by November! Today during school for Ben I did a little photo shoot with the kids to get "school pictures." I was a little nervous about it because 3-year-olds can be really hard to photograph well, but they did so awesome. I got good ones of all six of them and it didn't even take 10 minutes! Here is Ben's:

We're well on our way to being ready for this baby to come. Well, physically - maybe not mentally. ;) I've already got the essentials, plus some! I'm 30 weeks now so I just have the home stretch left. It's kind of silly, but I've been so excited to get the baby's room all set. She won't even be sleeping in there at first! But with Kaylee we had NO money whatsoever, so I didn't decorate at all. With Ben we had no space for him (other than a shared room with Kaylee), and I just didn't bother. So I really wanted to set up our tiny bedroom upstairs to be a nursery. It's the perfect size for it and it's turning out so cute. I can't wait to post some pictures when it's done.

The other day, Kaylee came running inside from playing out in the backyard with Ben and was VERY excited to show me something. She caught a snake and put it in their water table! It was pretty small, probably no longer than a foot, and I think it was a type of garter snake (not the black kind with yellow stripes that I'm used to though). Apparently the cat found it, put her paw on it (so it couldn't move) and Kaylee caught it. It was a mean little bugger though, Kaylee went to touch it and it struck at her and bit her - it didn't bite through or anything but it freaked me out (she thought it was hilarious of course).

Well folks, that's all for now. I'm hoping to post some before/afters from our house soon. We still have so much we want to do, but it's fun sometimes to look back and compare and realize how far we've come. Till next time!

Road Trip!!!

We decided to take a quick little trip to Utah to visit Paul and Melissa, and Andy, Steph and meet their daughter Margaret for the first time. We left on Thursday and got back on Sunday. It was really a perfect trip; we did everything we wanted to do. I was really scared of the kids getting carsick again, so I bought kids' Dramamine and gave it to them before we left, thank goodness they were fine the whole way!!

On Thursday (Will's birthday) we drove out, hung out with Paul and Melissa for a bit and Will saw one of his old friends from college. We also got to see Paul's work project which was very fun. On Friday, we got to drive past our old house and see how it's looking. It appears that the current owners are taking decent care of it, so that was nice to see. Although I can very honestly say that I do not miss it, at all. :) We went to Zupas for lunch, the same one that we went to on our first date. It was really fun to bring the kids and think about how far we'd come in (almost) 6 years. We went back to Andy and Steph's for dinner and that evening we watched Maggie for an hour so they could go out. She was very funny and started whispering to us after a little while. I'm REALLY sad because I was going to bring my camera and take some cute pictures of her, but somehow I totally forgot it. I'm not sure how I did that, but I guess I was focused on avoiding carsickness more than anything else, so that might be why.

Saturday we spent the whole day with Andy, Steph, and Maggie. They have been working on their condo for a while and it's looking really nice! I remember when they first moved in it was all just...beige. They put in new flooring and painted and it looks awesome! I'm kind of jealous of their kitchen, it's very similar to what I want to do in ours. I have no idea when we'll be able to get to ours though.

We walked to Temple Square and Kaylee really liked seeing the temple and all of the fountains there. Maggie and Ben were not so happy on the walk home, I think they were a little worn out.

We had lunch and then quiet time for a while, while Maggie napped, and then we went to a playground. Kaylee is REALLY close to being able to pump on the swing by herself, yay!! I look forward to not having to push the kids the entire time we're at the playground. For dinner we had some delicious pulled pork sandwiches that Steph made, and after dinner Will showed Steph, Paul, and Melissa his board game he created, "Queen of the Hill." It's a very fun game and I don't know how he comes up with things like that.

Sunday morning we headed home. The kids were amazingly good in the car for not having lots of toys and fun things to do. They got kind of noisy and bickered a lot on the way home, but still, all things considered, not too bad. Maybe next time we'll try Dramamine and a few things to do, and see if they still do okay. For now I'm just happy with what we got!

Well, we had a wonderful little visit and I hope it's not too long before we see everyone again.

Christmas

This is a super late post, but oh well. Christmas was really fun. We hadn't had much snow at all in December, but I was really hoping for a white Christmas. On Monday, three days before Christmas, it did this:

And I was like...that's great and all, but it'll basically all melt by Christmas. I was right. There was a little left, but not much. We did Christmas morning at home and then we drove to CO Springs where Will's family was staying. The kids had a GREAT time, they absolutely love playing with their cousins. That night a huge snow storm hit, so I sort of got my white Christmas. I enjoyed it, anyway. :)

Here are the kids playing with a cool Little People Nativity set that my mom sent. It was really cute and they literally played with it for hours on end. It played Christmas music, and shockingly enough, the music didn't drive me nuts after 5 minutes like most toys' music does! Good choice Mom!

I have a confession to make - I didn't take any pictures on Christmas day. Not even one. Sometimes I feel like all the present opening pictures are all kind of the same, year after year, and sometimes I need to put the camera down and enjoy being in the moment with my family. So I took these another day and I think they'll be good enough to document this Christmas!

Yup, my kids are cutie pies. Love them!!