We Had a Boy!

Fynn was born on the 20th of September, 9 days early.  All went well, and we are so glad to have him in our family.

It has been a week and a half of getting the feeding thing down, but Fynn is an awesome sleeper.  I put him down around 7:00 or 8:00.  I wake him up to feed him at 2:00ish, then he wakes up to eat again around 6:30.  This has been his pattern the last week, and we hope it continues.  The days seem very short though with everything we have to do.  Thanks to my mom, the older kids did get taken care of. 

We are blessed!  We had better start a collection for mission funds...we will have a boy on a mission for almost 8 years straight.

A Few Things We have Been Up To...

My sister Heidi married Bryan in the Salt Lake Temple.  We think that he is a good addition to the family.  

A few cute pictures of my kids at the temple and reception...

Noah turned 4!  He has seemed older than 3 to us for forever.  We had a fun party in St. George, and Ian talked him into having an airplane cake.

 

The kids and I went with grandma Terri and a few cousins to see the Blue Angels airshow.  All the kids loved it, especially Ian.

Peter broke his arm...following in Ian's footsteps I guess.  He only had to have the cast on for 3 weeks, but by the end it still stunk sooo bad.

I have been forcing Brad to do hours and hours of yard work.  Things are taking shape.  We laid sod in the backyard (which took weeks of prep work and a day of tractor work donated by my brother in law JJ)  The project that is the most fun to see take shape is this dry river bed.  It will eventually extend into a dry pond in our front yard.  All these rock were dug out of the trenches when we installed our sprinkling system, and yes we do have enough for the pond part too.  I will have to post a picture with the finished project.

And finally, my mom, Britany, and I took a girls trip to Austin Texas for the Country Living Fair.  We, or maybe just I, spent too much money, but we had a lot of fun and had a break from mom duty.

Funny

I said that I wasn't going to post any pictures, but that I had some cute ones...this isn't one of them. After I posted the last post I was looking at some of my pictures on my computer and laughed out loud when I saw this one. WILL SOMEONE TELL THAT KID'S MOM THAT HE NEEDS A HAIRCUT! Wow, it always looks worse in pictures, right? I think this was last November. In my defense, Noah has had two haircuts since then.

5! Seriously?!

This is just the expression that goes through Brad and my head frequently these days...

We are having our 5th child! I was reading back on our blogs and when I announced we were having Peter, I said our 4th and final child. Well, NOW we are having our final child. I know that there is someone much more powerful than birth control out there but I am hoping he doesn't haven any surprises in store for us in the future. We are happy and most of the time a little overwhelmed by our future family size.

I am due the end of September, and was going to wait until we knew the sex to announce, but we have decided not to find out! We have never done it before, and think if we are going to do it, now is our last chance. And, by me posting this, maybe it will keep me strong enough to keep this decision for the next 3 weeks until the ultrasound. I no longer have free access to an ultrasound machine now that I am not working, so I only have to stay strong a little longer.

So, there it is. I have some cute pictures of the kids that I need to post, and if it didn't take 3 minutes per picture to post them, I think that I would post little more often. But they are all doing well, and we are all looking forward to the warmer weather!

Late Christmas Post

So I decided that I would do a post, but when I went to post some pictures, we haven't really taken any since Christmas. So...this will be a Christmas post.

We had a great time. We surprised Brad's parents and showed up on their door step at 5:00 on Christmas Eve. Mae and Ian spent Christmas Eve day skiing with Grandpa Wendell, Brad and a bunch of cousins. It was their first time, and they absolutely loved it. Noah and I made cookies for Santa, and Peter had a nap.


These are pictures from Christmas Eve. The family shot is us showing off our "Gift from the Heart" Christmas. Brad gave Mae and photo book and story titled "How to Train Your Dad"-a complete how-to guide on how to wrap your dad around your finger, illustrated with pictures of Mae. I gave Ian a collage of pictures, the Millenium Falcon, the Salt Lake Temple, an X wing fighter pic with CTR and 'May the Force be with You' on it, and Brad's mission plaque-all to hang in his room to remind him to stay on the good side, CTR, and prepare for his mission. Mae made Noah a dog house out of pvc pipe and cardboard. Ian made Peter a picture flip book with pics of family and other household things he wanted him to learn how to say (I have to say it helped Peter's language development, he knows most of the words in that book now). Noah painted a BYU logo picture for Brad--he loved giving it to him. And Peter, with the help of Brad, put his handprint on a paper, and had it framed. We love Gift of the Heart. I think that it is even the kids favorite part of Christmas.