Horton and Fly Guy

Our local library (where I am not the librarian anymore) had a "bring your favorite book character to life" night. Spencer dressed up as Horton from "Horton Hears a Who" and James was Fly Guy from the Fly Guy series. They each won first place in their categories, which were "best Horton" and "best Fly Guy." We had a great time coming up with the costumes.

Carrie also took first in her category of cutest baby, no surprise there!

Company

We were lucky to have Devon's mom come for a week before Easter to help us out. On Friday Devon had the day off so we went to Bluff Fort.

We have been here a lot of times, but every time we see something new.  This time Devon and his mom got to go into Jens Nielson's house.  A worker at the fort lives in it, and invited them to come and see. 

On Saturday Melissa and her family and Devon's dad joined us.  The dare-devils- everyone except Devon's mom and I and Huck and James and Carrie) went on the hike behid our house.  Here's Naya crawling through the crawl space.

This is the first time we have let Spencer go on this hike.  He had a great time.

James and Huck had a great time here.  The next time I asked James to take a bath he said "I want to take a bath with Huck!"  We love family!

Easter 2013

We got to participate in 3 egg hunts this year. We only have pictures of 2- but there was plenty of candy to be had in our house!

Our Easter Bunny comes on Saturday morning.  The boys- oh yeah and a girl now- got stuffed bunnies, chocolate bunnies and a marble race.

The most wonderful thing of Easter was that we blesses Carrie on Easter.  Devon's parents and my sister Melissa and her family got to join us.  It was a wonderful blessing.  We had a big dinner with all of our friends here, and the weather was wonderful.  it was a great day.

Here is our sweet Carrie in her blessing dress.

holi day festival

Our neighbor had a Holi Day celebration again. This time I got to attend, and it is even more fun than it looks.  I love the bright colors, and how clean you feel after taking a shower.

Leprechaun traps

So we have a new tradition that we started last year to make leprechaun traps.  In case you didn't know leprechauns only come out the night before St. Patrick's Day.  They love money and sparkly things, so we build traps to lure them in.  If your traps are good enough they leave you a treasure.  Spencer loved doing this, I had to limit him to six traps.  The leprechauns left us a treasure of chocolate coins, green tattoos (temporary of course) and wind up bath toys.  They left pretty convincing footprints too!

I can't get the video of Spencer to load, which is too bad because he really made six intricate traps.  He is very creative.

The boys demonstrating their traps. Also over Devon's Spring Break the boys finished their stickers on their "good choices charts." the grand prize was camping with Daddy, but it was still too cold at night for our level of camping gear, so they camped in Devon's classroom- and loved it.

when Carrie was born

So I wanted to record the birth story, of sorts.  It wasn't too exciting, but I think that is a good thing.  So when I went to my 36 week doctor's appointment I was very swollen.  I have never had a problem with this before, but I really wasn't too concerned.  My blood pressure was very high- somewhere close to 150/95- I don't really remember because before this the numbers meant nothing to me.  The nurses seemed very worried, but the doctor seemed to be quite calm (since then I have realized that's just his personality, which is a good thing in a doctor).  Anyway, I had gained like 7 pounds in 2 weeks in water weight.  The doctor gave me an antibiotic and had me do some tests at home.  A nurse told me to go home and lay down and stay down as much as possible.  When I came back 2 days later I had lost almost 5 of those pounds in water weight- yes I went to the bathroom a lot.  Unfortunately my blood pressure was still very high, so he said we would be delivering earlier than expected.  I went to get an ultrasound at the hospital, but I had to wait for 4 hours for an appointment.  Luckily there are some people (the Adams) who were in our branch when we were in Mexican Hat who let me and two crazy boys come stay at their house.  They fed us lunch and even watched the boys while I got the ultrasound.  I hope I can grow up to be as giving as them.  The ultrasound said I was 37 weeks along and the baby was healthy and 7 pounds, all good news for an early delivery.  The doctor said we will wait for the test results, but probably deliver sometime the next week.  Thankfully my mom was able to change her plans and come a week early.  I am so glad she came before we actually had the baby.  So the test came back positive for pre-eclamsia and we scheduled the delivery for early Thursday morning.  At this hospital they have you come in the day before to do blood work and get some "instruction."  So Devon and I went up on Wednesday afternoon and planed to stay in a hotel since the hospital is 2 hours away.  At the hospital my blood pressure was even higher than it had been, but the doctor seemed not too worried, especially when we said we were staying in town anyway.  We went to the hotel and watched TV (and decided we haven't been missing much since getting rid of TV).  We went out to a little mom and pop place for dinner.  The owner found out I was to deliver the next day and told Devon to come back for a celebration dinner on the house.  Anyway, we went to bed but I really didn't sleep, too nervous for the next day I guess.  At about 3am our phone rang- that was weird.  The hospital was calling and apparently our doctor had a very strong impression that I should come into the hospital then instead of later, so we went.  I so grateful to have a doctor that would listen to the spirit and follow it, even though he didn't know why.  They actually called all of the hotels in Monticello because I was mistaken about the one we actually had reservations for.  Nothing happened, but he did have me start an IV with medicine for pre-eclamsia to prevent seizures  (I am glad I didn't know that's what eclamsia really is).  Besides taking forever to get the IV's in everything went smoothly.  They delivered at the scheduled time, 7:30, well actually 7:47.  One thing that was odd was that they put the spinal block in when I was sitting up, I have never done that before, but it worked.  They gave me some great medicine after the block wore off so I didn't feel anything the first day.  Really the recovery has been pretty good, still painful but good all things considered.  At first I thought "This is the way to go", I didn't have any traumatic labor, I was only in the hospital 4 hours before I had a baby.  Now I am pretty sick of recovering and wish I felt better, but I guess you can't have everything.  We do have the most important thing.  Carrie was born healthy and only 5lb 11oz.  She is very tiny, but very sweet.  She spent about 30 minutes in the incubator- but that's the only extra.  We are so lucky to have her sweet spirit in our home.  The boys love her, and she has here daddy wrapped around her little finger already.  she's not much of one for sleeping at night, but she's worth it.

Why is everything about baby Carrie?

So the other day Spencer said "Why is everything about baby Carrie now?" Well, mostly that's how little babies are, and she is so cute.

We got one other new addition to our family.  The boys, especially Spencer love jumping!

Spencer is trying to read to Carrie.  She can't even focus yet, but I'm sure she enjoyed the thought.

James loves holding baby Carrie too and trying to help her- sometimes a little too much.

Isn't she a beautiful girl?

She actually looks a lot like the boys did as babies, although she is still not quite as big as either of them when they were born.  We went to the doctor yesterday and she was almost seven pounds at 3 weeks. We love having this little girl in our family.