an update, 2 dragons, a dalmation and...

  These past 8 weeks have been wonderful-

full of fun and laughter,

hugs and kisses,

and not much sleep.

I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Below is a pic of my cute family after Sam's baby blessing.

(I was hoping to get a pic of all of us in Sunday clothes,

but couldn't convince my older 2 to put them back on. 

Oh, well.)

(Brian's mom made his cute outfit.)

Caleb and Brayden 

are great helpers and they

LOVE 

baby Sam. 

(So, fun story. After the blessing, my brother teasingly asked Caleb and Brayden

if he could take baby Sam home with him. 

Caleb responded: "No. He's already been blessed to us.")

 Halloween this year was a lot of fun.

Some wonderful people lent us some adorable costumes-

3 musketeer costumes and 2 dragon costumes.

Unfortunately Caleb refused to wear his musketeer costume and chose instead to be a dalmation-though obviously he was fine keeping the sword.

So Brian ended up being the only musketeer in our family.
Perhaps we didn't have a matching theme-
but we had a lot of fun and each of my boys were so cute!!!

 

Introducing...

  INTRODUCING-

 Samuel Richard

Born 9/12/13 

6 pounds 11 ounces

20 inches long

More pics. of our sweet, little Sam.

 

 

My 4 wonderful BOYS! 

It is so amazing to me to see and feel the changes 

that another sweet baby has brought to our family-

more LOVE

  more JOY

more LAUGHTER

more CUDDLING

less SLEEP (But the addition of the others definitely make up for it!)

I am so blessed!!!

SURPRISE!!

So today I went to the doctor for my big ultrasound.

We've been waiting anxiously for this day 

because not only would we find out if the baby was 

a BOY or GIRL, 

we would also be able to see how the baby is developing.

The baby was moving around a lot and was all scrunched up so the ultrasound tech had a hard time finding everything. Soon after, though, the doctor came in and looked again and was able to declare that the baby looks great!

After the ultrasound I stopped at the store and bought 

helium balloons of the appropriate color (blue-boy, pink-girl)

 and put them in a box I had previously wrapped.

When we got home we polled everyone in our

 little family whether they thought we were having a boy or girl.

Here are the results:

Caleb-Girl

Brayden-Boy

Brian-Girl (before the ultrasound)

Me-Girl (before the ultrasound)

 We then had the boys open the "present" to find out.

(Brian recorded them opening the "present" and it was so cute to watch

their excitement and anticipation! When they saw the color of the balloons

both jumped up and down and Caleb declared, "Yeah a party!" Unfortunately I get an

error message every time I try to upload the video. So I guess you're stuck

with pics to find out instead.)

Yep, I'm seriously outnumbered now!

Oh how I LOVE them-all 4 of my boys!!!

Now if we can just come up with a name!

Miracle #3

 I've seen quite a few miracles in my life. 

This post is focused on 3 of the miracles

that bless my life everyday with joy, laughter and love.

After almost 5 years of trying to fulfill our dream of becoming parents-

hoping, praying, rejoicing, dreaming, crying-

(I'm usually a very private person so I don't think I'll share all the details, especially online, 

suffice it to say that I have a difficult time getting pregnant and 

a hard time staying pregnant.)

-we were blessed to meet one of the most wonderful, bravest girls-EVER!

The day Tanya entered our lives and our hearts, our family changed forever.

I love our Caleb so much and thank my Heavenly Father everyday

for him- our MIRACLE!

Not long after Caleb turned 1 I found out I was pregnant again. 

I was so excited, 

AND nervous that this pregnancy would end too early like the others,

AND hopeful that everything would work out and we'd be blessed with another baby in our family.

Other than 1 tiny scare at the beginning the pregnancy went well and 

our Brayden was born just a few days shy of 39 weeks. 

Once again our family was changed forever 

and I am so grateful everyday for this additional MIRACLE in our lives!

We were hoping that we would be blessed again with another baby soon 

after Brayden was born, but that was not to be.

After more visits to our Reproductive Endocrinologist

and a couple more diagnoses that decrease our chance of getting pregnant even more,

we were told that our best chance would be to do IVF.

At first I thought, "Ok let's do it! Whatever it takes!"

But then reality set in 

and we started getting nervous about all the medications I would have to take,

the emotional roller coaster involved with IVF,

and the cost.

So we decided that we should ask the ONE

 who would know for sure what we should do.

We prayed and fasted, 

and asked our family to do the same.

The ANSWER- We felt like we should try a medication we had tried once previously.

We were so excited when I got that positive pregnancy result a couple of months later.

Brian commented that we were starting 9 months of worry-

TRUE (I'm naturally a worrier!) 

but also 9 months of HOPE and DREAMING-

and GRATITUDE for this MIRACLE!!!

My BIG, little brother

This post is mostly about my BIG, little brother Matthew. 

If you look at the pic below you can probably tell why I say he's my big, little brother.
Not that I'm a shrimp at 5 feet 8,
but at 6 feet 4 inches he has at least a couple of inches over everyone in our family. 

 These past 2 weekends have been pretty eventful for him.
FIRST:
Last weekend we headed to Boise, Idaho 
for the Idaho State High School basketball championships. 

We had so much fun.

Eating...

Swimming...

(Caleb said this was his favorite thing to do.)

Got to love the hot tub bubble beards.

Addie, Caleb and Brayden in the hot tub.

We were able to go swimming Friday and Saturday morning. 

Brayden spent about 20-30 minutes in the big pool Friday morning before he started

turning into a blueberry, so we decided to spend some time in the hot tub.

Saturday morning he lasted 2 minutes before he got out of the big pool 

and headed for the hot tub all on his own.

I have to admit I wasn't very sad to leave the big pool when he did.

Matt and his teammates played really well and ended up getting 3rd place.

(What follows is a whole bunch of cute pics of my family and Matt,
if you can't wait to hear about the
SECOND exciting thing that happened this weekend-

skip to the end and come back and look at the pics later.)

Matt and his senior teammates.

Matt and the adorable Korey.

Matt and our gorgeous sis Em.

Matt and our awesome mom.

Matt and our sis Katie, her husband Aaron and daughter Addie.

Matt and our sis-in-law Paulina, adorable nephew Korey and brother B.

The whole crew!

So, they were giving out free chocolate milk at the games.

These 3 guzzled at least 2-3 bottles per game per child.

After the last game they went around collecting empty bottles from the bleachers.

Here is their collection.

And I wouldn't be surprised if this is how much they drank.

Second:

Ok, so the rest of the exciting happenings of these past two weeks-

Today Matt opened his MISSION CALL.

On the 26th of JUNE he is headed to the MTC and then to

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA!

I will miss him, but I know this will be a very special time for him.

What a wonderful example he is to me and to my boys.

LOVE YOU MATT!

Once there was a SNOWMAN

Once there was a snowman (or 2),

 

Tall

Tall

Tall

I absolutely love these shirts!

Very appropriate for 2 little boys that love playing in the snow.

That is one good thing about all the snow this year.

 

Caleb and his cousin Addie in their igloo.

A couple of weekends ago we went out to lunch with our dear friend Tanya.

It was so much fun seeing her. 

She was the one who gave the boys the snowman shirts.

They love them and begged to put them on as soon as we got home.