Yes....Thank You

So I know I am horrible at blogging. I need to do it better and more often. I'm super fantastic at reading everybody else's blogs and catching up on their lives, but not so good at keeping mine up to date.

So, this is a blog that I read. I read her post today and I totally understand her. I'm not very good at expressing my feeling, but other people tend to hit the nail on the head and then I wonder why I didn't think of it that way. Anyway.......check this post out if you have a minute,

http://stakerzxposed.blogspot.com/2011/01/thank-you-mr-lightyear.html

If you haven't heard their story and you have time you should go back through her blog and read it. It is a family from Provo. Bronson is their little boy who drowned in their bath tub. She goes through every moment step by step. Her thoughts, her heartaches, her spiritual ahas. I couldn't imagine going through what she went through, but I clearly understand how it happened. If you're wondering Bronson is perfectly normal, happy, healthy child. He's a miracle. I love his story and I'm so grateful that she shared it with everyone.

Blessing Day

Here she is on her blessing day.

He looks so sharp in his new suits. Good thing we stopped at Mr. Macs on the way to the hospital!

Here we all are! I can't believe we have four kids!

Here's the dress. This is the first dress I've made. It turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. The pictures aren't the greatest. I think I'll have my mom take better ones.

Front:

Detail:


The pattern didn't call for a tie. But I wanted one so it could fit her better, so I just made it up.
Back:

Slacker Face

This is not the best picture, it a picture of my computer, done with my phone. But I love this picture, I ordered one, but I just wanted to share it cuz I love it. This girl came to the hospital and did a free photo shoot and then you can order pictures if you want to. It was nice.

So I know, I'm a slacker. I've been meaning to put pictures of Eliza up. The last three weeks have been pretty rough. I don't know if it's the fact that this was my fourth child, or if it's the fact that it is the fourth in five years, or a combination of both, but I am just not bouncing back as fast. My body still hurts. During the first week I had a fever and we thought I had a bladder, or uterine infection. So after a test we found out it was nothing. But I was still miserable. Eliza has thrush. If any of you know about that, it's not fun. For me. I don't think she even cares. But it kills me. It's a yeast infection that lives in their mouth. So when you breast feed you transfer it back and forth. I have open sores, lets just say it's painful. I've been so ready to just stop nursing, but I keep telling myself it will be better in the long run if I can just get through this. I've had thrush with all my kids except Caden. It hasn't been this bad with any of them. It's getting better though. I think I'll make it.

Last Sunday we went with Curtis down to St. George. He had a 4 day training so we decided to go have a vacation. Vacation-HA! Monday night he came home and told me they had given them Tuesday off to work on their presentations they had to do. I'm so glad he got that day off because just after 10 Monday night all 3 kids started throwing up. We were up all night with them throwing up. I'm so glad I didn't have to take care of it alone. So needless to say, we didn't do a whole lot on that "vacation". Then as soon as we get home it's run run run.

I feel like it's Spring because I'm trying to clean my house really good because it hasn't been cleaned good for months.

We celebrated our 5 year anniversary on November 2. We went to dinner at P.F. Changs. Then we did our Christmas shopping. I have a feeling that's what our anniversary date is going to be every year. Dinner and Christmas shopping. We got most of it done though.

I want to get some pictures from my mom of the birth. My husband doesn't take very many pictures. Here's a few that we have though.

Of course I don't want to put this one on, I didn't even want to take it, but Curtis wanted a picture of me because well, we really don't have any. It does look pretty funny. But you can see why I don't take pictures of me pregnant!

She was 7 lbs 14 oz 19 1/2 inches. I never thought I would have an almost 8 lb baby!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, while I was in labor Olivia broke her arm at my parents house. It's really not that big of a break, I couldn't even see it on the x-ray. But we weren't there, and we didn't take her so we didn't really get to talk about it or anything. Our doctor looked at the x-ray after we told him what happened, and he said it would have healed on it's on with maybe a splint. But maybe because she is little she wouldn't keep it on and to help with the pain they just put a cast on. We go in this week and she's supposed to get another one on, we'll see if she needs it.

Update

So if anybody is wondering what's going on, here it is.

NO BABY

I'm 38 1/2 weeks. I really thought I'd have it by now. No such luck.

I've have braxton hick all day every day for the past few months. But they don't do ANYTHING! It's really frustrating. They are getting stronger so I think that they might be doing something, but the last 3 weeks that I have been checked, there is no change. I'm 1 1/2 cm-every week. The worst part is I have contractions at night, all night long about 8-10 min apart, every night, and every night they get more painful, so I don't sleep and I keep thinking, maybe it's starting, then as soon as the morning hits, they stop. It is soooo frustrating. There is a light at the end of the tunnel though. He is going to strip my membranes on Tuesday, so we'll see if that works. It worked last time. So hopefully I'll be ready enough on Tuesday that it will work. In the mean time, I have stopped going to school. It's too hard to be on my feet all day and then come home and still have tons of stuff to do and just be exhausted. My plan is to go back in January. It's so nice that they are so flexible with me and my schedule. I do miss it right now, but it would just be too hard to do. That's about all that's going on. We just hang out at home, don't do a whole lot. Just waiting for a baby to get here.

***Sorry-I'm not going to post pictures because I look like a whale. I'm not so cute pregnant.***

Nauvoo

We took a family trip to Nauvoo this past week. My brother Michael is there for the summer being a preforming missionary. It was really fun to go there and spend so much time there. Not like when we've gone there for a day or two before. We spent 4 days there and there was still more to see that we didn't get to. We were spending a lot of time watching all the plays and everything that Michael was involved in because that was one of our main reasons for going. But he is still a missionary so we couldn't spend all of our time with him. He is loving it though! He is learning all the history and everything that is out there. I didn't even know there were missions like this out there. He will be home on Aug. 17 I think.

The "trip" its self was actually better then I thought it would be. We only had on throw up incident which happened about 2 hours into the trip. So we got some drugs for that and didn't have any more. We did have one problem with our car but it all worked out ok. We had just left Adam-ondi-ahmen, and if you have ever been there you know it's in the middle of nowhere. So we were following my parents and the plan was to go to Far West then to Liberty, then to Independence. But my parents were trying to get to Independence before a certain time because they wanted to meet with Caleb's mission president before it got too late. So they decided to bypass Far West and just go straight to Independence and then come back to Liberty. So Curtis and I were talking and we decided that we didn't need to go to meet with the mission president so we were going to go to Far West. Well, just after I got off the phone with my mom, of course we have a child that has to go potty!! So we hit the first gas station we passed. Which was pretty close but it was literally the middle of nowhere. So Curtis took Livi in to go potty, and he came out and he was pointing at the tire. When he got in he said-"Well I guess it's a good thing we stopped, because we have a flat tire" So luckily they had a place for air for the tires, and Curtis went in a bought some sort of a kit the patches tires. you shove things in to the holes I guess. So I was watching him try and get the things in, and I can hear the air blowing out. And as he's putting this thing in they are just shredding because it was so hot. So that wasn't working.I looked at the front tire, and it was flat too. Luckily there was this girl at the gas station that knew this guy that lived like 2 blocks away that did tires. So she showed us where he lived. He took off the back tire and patched it, then when he was filling it up with air the side walls just bubbled out. The front tire wasn't as bad. So he filled it up with air and then he showed us to the nearest Walmart was so we could get it fixed. Thank goodness for kind people who helped us out. While we were sitting in the car figuring this all out I decided to call our roadside assistance that we got with our warranty from the dealer. They were not helpful AT ALL!!! First of all they couldn't find us. But as he's looking for us, he was asking me some questions. I told him we had a couple flat tires. The first question he asked me was, "how many spare tires do you have?" Are you KIDDING me!!! Do you think I'm an IDIOT! How many spare tires do people have? So he then tells me that the only thing they do for flat tires is come out and change them and then they take the flat one, fix it and get it back to you. So unless you have 2 spares they can't really do anything. But-a flat tire doesn't qualify you for a tow. I guess there's no rule for 2 flat tires. If we wanted to pay out of pocket they would tow it and then we could battle it out with the roadside assistance company to see if they would reimburse us. I'm so glad we didn't have to do that. I'm also glad that I know that about our roadside assistance if I ever get 2 flat tires again. So needless to say we got fixed up at Walmart and then we bypassed Far West and went straight to Liberty and met my parent there just in time. The only other issue we had was that night. We decided to drive as far as we could and just find a hotel that night. So midnight rolls around and we decide that the next town we see we should stop. So at that stop, there were no Hotel rooms available. So we drove to the next little town. Nothing. So we continue to drive hoping to find something. We were in about mid Kansas. Well, we finally got told that there was nothing available from there until the Colorado border because there was some State fair starting in the morning. So we drove until we couldn't drive anymore. We found a gas station and parked there and slept for the night. Well, about 3 or 4 hours. Drove home the next day. Anyway, it was a good trip. Thanks goodness for my mom. She took tons of pictures. I am so not good at it. I have a few that I took on my phone, but I need to get all the pictures from her, and then I'll share them. If I remember to. But here's what I have-

These were hat's from one of the plays Micheal was in. They were dressing up. It was so cute. Caden LOVED all the sister missionaries. He would always find them and hug them and talk their ears off. He was always asking me where the girls were.

This was Olivia's favorite place. I don't remember what it was called,but it had activities for the kids. She loved to dress up and just play. We walked by it the next day and she started crying because she wanted to go be a princess.

School, here I come!

So I've decided to head back to school!

Those of you that know me, know that I have always always always wanted to go to beauty school. Looking back now I regret that I didn't go a long time ago, ya know, before I had kids. Then, I was going to go, then I found out I was pregnant with Payton, and I told myself I just couldn't do it, with 2 kids and one on the way. Well, here I am 3 kids and one on the way and I'm just gonna do it! I'm gonna jump in there and get it done or I'll just keep putting it off. I was always planning on going to MATC because they're super close, and super cheap. Well, I found out that they're moving. They're not moving too far, but it's far enough that I don't want to drive that far.

So one day I was playing on line, looking up schools to see if I could get some info on prices. Well, needless to say none of them list school costs on line. I came across this school in AF, on the hospital road. That is super close to my house. I had never heard of it before. So I had to go in and check it out because of course, there wasn't a whole lot of info on line. So I went in there and met with the owners, and they are super nice. It's a really new school, so it's not too big yet. They were also running a special, $9,000 off tuition. It was still more then what I wanted to pay, but it is better then any other school, that I know of at least. But my favorite part is that they are going to be super flexible with me since ya know, I have almost 4 kids. The first 8 weeks are full time, and then after that it's just 4 hours a day. 4 hours! I can do that. But on days that my husband is home I'm going to go all day so I can get done sooner. It starts June 22. So this summer is going to be kind of crazy busy, but I just need to do it. It felt so comfortable being there and I just had the strongest feeling that I just needed to jump in and do it. So that's what I'm doing. I haven't looked into student loans yet, but hopefully that will happen tomorrow, and if I'm supposed to go then everything will fall into place. Not that I want to get ANOTHER loan, but I feel ok about it since the prophets have said it's ok to do it for school. But then it just makes me feel guilty about all of our other debt. But isn't that why I'm going to school? Yes.

Anyway, that's my life as of right now. I'm positive I will be needing models so if you're interested, let me know!!

1 Year check up

Payton went in for his one year check yesterday. Poor baby. He got the regular 4 shots, but the doctor also wanted to take blood and run some tests because he's so little. He weighs 15 lbs 6 oz. He gained ALMOST a pound in 3 months. The doctor said that for him to be in the 5th percentile he needs to weigh 19 lbs. He's not on the charts right now. He's been gaining weight, just not very much so he's hasn't really been on the charts at all anyway. So he wants to check for things like anemia. He didn't say what else he was checking for but I know there's other things. So then the nurse at the doctors office tried to take blood from him, but her needle wasn't small enough. So then we had to go to the hospital and have the other arm poked. Poor kid, he got poked so many times. But he's doing good today. We have to just try and bulk him up. Give him lots of fatty food and try and make him gain weight. But besides being small, everything else was great. Developmentally and everything. The doctor doesn't think anything is wrong with him because he's happy and healthy, so the only reason we're doing the tests is because of the numbers. I don't think anything is wrong with him either. I think he's just small. But we'll see how the tests come back.