It's a Girl

Addie made her debut February 26, 2016 about 5 days early. I was so thankful to have my parents here for when I went into labor. They were originally going to arrive on February 29th because my due date wasn't until March 2nd. I explained to them that both of my other boys came about a week early. I really wanted them here for the birth of Addie so that they could watch the boys for us while we were in the hospital. That was my biggest stress. I wanted to make sure the boys were taken care of. They arrived on the evening of February 21st. We had a few days of good weather so I showed them around town a little bit on Monday and Tuesday. By Tuesday evening we were all wondering when I was going to go into labor. We decided on Wednesday we would plan a trip to Silver falls to go hiking because it was going to be a nice day. We pulled Camo from school and made the trip over to Silver Falls. I just hit 39 weeks and it was probably crazy of me to be doing a strenuous 3 mile hike, but I was anxious to get things moving and hopefully go into labor. It worked, because early Thursday morning I woke up to consistent contractions every 10 minutes. In the morning I told J I had been up all night and that we might be going to the hospital. I decided to send him to work because I was going to wait until they got a little bit closer. Well, they ended up getting farther apart, but were still coming every 20 minutes all day on Thursday. I was exhausted because they were just uncomfortable enough that I wasn't able to sleep all day. Then around 9 p.m. on Thursday I could feel them coming back on every 8-10 minutes. J and I decided to go to bed around 10, but my contractions started to get even closer so I decided to get in the bath to see if they would go away. While I was in the bath they started to get closer and closer. I then noticed they were coming every 4 minutes so I quickly got out of the bath and woke J up to tell him we better head to the hospital. It was about midnight and J was so tired and out of it. I  woke my mom and dad up to tell them we were headed to the hospital. My mom came with us, while my dad stayed back home with the boys. When we got to the hospital I was at a 6. I decided I was far enough along that I wasn't going to do the epidural and just get through the contractions. About 2 hours later she checked me again and I was only 7 1/2 centimeters dilated.  I was discouraged that in 2 hours of hard labor I had only progressed 1 1/2 centimeters. I was exhausted because at this point I hadn't slept in 24 hours. I knew that I would be too exhausted to push so I decided to try out the epidural. I absolutely loved it! I can't believe that with the other two boys I had them without the epidural. It was so nice to be able to sleep until it was time to push. The epidural must have helped me relax because in 30 minutes I jumped all the way up to 9 centimeters. About an hour later it was finally time to push. She was born at 6 in the morning on Friday. It was by far my best labor experience and I think it was because of the epidural. I'm grateful that I have been able to deliver both my boys without an epidural, but I'm also grateful that I was able to have the epidural for this birth. I think if I were to have another baby, I would choose the epidural.

A fun fact is that all of my kids were born on a Friday. Addie weighed in at 8 pounds 3 ounces. She was my biggest baby by 1 ounce. TJ was 8 pounds 2 ounces. We are all in love with her. I was worried that TJ was going to have a hard time, but he absolutely loves her. Everyday he runs into our room asking if Addie is awake or wondering where she is. He loves to help me with her and always gets in her face to kiss her. He is constantly saying,"Oh baby Addie, your so cute, I love your baldy head". He has many different terms of endearment for her and you never know what he's going to call her next. I love the bond they have with one another already! Camo is also a big help. He doesn't seem as interested, but is always there to help if she's crying or I need something. J is just in love with her. I love seeing the love he has for her and it's very apparent. Every day that he comes home from work he wants to immediately hold her. Whenever she is crying, I hand her off to him and he helps her to calm down. Addie and I are so lucky to have these boys in our life!

 

Pregnancy and Latest Happenings

A lot has been going on since the last time I posted. I was out jogging the other day thinking about how much I used to keep up with this blog and how much I love to go back and read my posts. It's so nice to have a journal to look back on so I wanted to post a few things that we have been up to.

Camo started kindergarten this last fall. I had such a hard time letting him go all day long. I missed him so much. The first day of kinder started out great for him and he was so excited. That really helped me knowing that he was excited to be there. The rest of the week went just as great! He seemed to love school. Then everything fell apart the next week. He cried and didn't want to go. Mrs. Slay his assistant teacher, told me one day that he was sad and said I just need to see my mommy. I think Camo was just having a hard time being away from me for so long. I never did preschool with him which probably didn't help his or my separation anxiety. This went on for another month or two. Every time I would drop him off for school, I had to walk him to his classroom and he would start crying. It was so hard. The good news was that as soon as he settled down, his teacher, Mrs. Z, would give me a phone call saying he was just fine. I also had to eat lunch with him almost every day the first couple months of school because he just needed to see me in the middle of the day. I would be lying if I said I didn't love it too. I missed him so much and it helped me to see him as well. I was also able to volunteer in his classroom every Wednesday which was wonderful. I loved meeting all of his classmates and seeing how he interacted with all the kids. Fast forward 5 months and he doesn't need me to walk him to his classroom, he doesn't need me to eat lunch with him, and he doesn't need me to volunteer anymore. He has also made so many friends. He now loves going to school and really loves his friends and teachers. I know it's important to remember that when our kids go through these phases, they will eventually end. In the moment I thought he would never be okay going to school. He does great now and I'm so thankful!

Camo is such a sweet boy. He loves to play legos and play board games. He is also really awesome at dancing. He recently attended a friends birthday party and when I arrived to pick him up, I had multiple parents asking me where he got his dance skills from. I told them his dad! He is always so thoughtful and is always concerned about how other people are feeling. He is such a great eater and will eat almost any meal I make. Sometimes he doesn't like it, but will ask me if I'm sad that he doesn't like it. I try to explain to him that it's okay if you don't like something, we just have to be respectful and polite when telling someone that we don't like it.

A cute story about him that I don't want to forget. J was peeling a cutie orange for him and realized there were ten slices so he thought he would use it as a teaching moment and teach him about tithing. J told him to pretend that he was the Lord and he then gave Camo all the slices. He told him that the Lord only required him to give 10 percent back which was one slice. After Camo gave J back one slice, he looked at his pile of slices and said "Is that all the Lord gets?" It was really cute to see at his age that he understood the Lord doesn't require much in return for all we're given. Leave it to kids to put things into perspective for us adults. I'm so grateful for all the things my children teach me. They are such a blessing in my life.

Pregnancy
I am about a week away from having our first baby girl! I haven't posted at all about my pregnancy so I wanted to post a few things so that I can remember a little bit of how this pregnancy went. It took us a little bit longer than we had expected to get pregnant this time around so when we found out in June that we were expecting we were ecstatic! This pregnancy wasn't really any different than my other pregnancies. I didn't really get sick which has always been such a blessing. I craved salty foods at the beginning and couldn't care less about desserts just like my other two pregnancies. Now towards the end of my pregnancy I can't get enough sweets. I'm loving anything and everything chocolate. Maybe it's my bodies way of preparing me for an exhausting labor.  The one thing that was interesting this pregnancy was that I had a major food aversion to our home grown summer tomatoes. It was really sad because we planted three of them outside in our backyard and I hardly ate any. I loved them the year before so it was really weird. I hope to be back to my normal self this summer and plant some more that I can enjoy. I have been able to workout this pregnancy which has been awesome. I usually do strength training three times a week and running three miles about five times a week. I have gained about 30 pounds so far and hope to keep it right around that weight. We did our gender ultrasound at week 20 and decided to do a gender reveal party. Our appointment was on a Monday and we waited until Saturday to reveal what we were having. I was prepared for another boy because I thought I saw boy parts during the ultrasound. Apparently I'm not an ultrasound tech because I was wrong! I was so surprised to find out we were having a girl!  For the party we had Roth's bakery fill donuts with either pink or blue cream filled donuts. We gave them the envelope so we had no idea what we were going to bite into. We had some friends and family over and we all got to bite into a doughnut together! It was so fun and exciting when we all bit into pink cream filled doughnuts! Interesting story, the morning of the gender reveal party I woke up and told J I had a dream we bit into pink cream filled doughnuts. Jordan said he had an almost identical dream. We were both confused because we were certain we were having a boy.  The boys were very excited. We can't wait to meet her!

                                                                         37 weeks

                                                                            38 1/2 weeks

                                                                           35 weeks

                                                                           30 weeks

                                                                               24 weeks

                                                                           22 weeks

                                                        19 weeks- I thought I had a bump then!

Jordan is still working for Back to Health Clinic as a chiropractor. He seems to be liking it for now. We know that this is the job we are supposed to have right now, but things could always change. We have been so blessed to have a nice home and neighborhood to live in.  He was able to go golfing a few times last year which he really enjoys. He wishes he could go up to the mountain and snowboard a little bit more often. He is definitely excited to have a little girl and I know he will be an amazing dad just like he is to the boys!

TJ is my little buddy while Camo is at school. He is such a loving sweet boy, but he can also be very feisty. He has a way different personality than Camo so it has been more of a challenge to parent him. I know that his strong willed personality will pay off and I'm trying to enjoy his spunky little self. He is extremely picky with food and loves to eat bread with jam. He also loves mushrooms which is so funny considering his picky palate. He still loves his thumb and his polka dot blanket! I know he will be an awesome big brother because he loves our friends little baby and asks to hold her every time we see them. He also loves to pat my belly and ask when baby Addy is coming out!

Camo turned 5

Camo turned 5 in January and we decided to let him invite one friend to go to the bounce house with and out to Mcdonald's after. He chose his little friend from church. They had a great day and J was able to take the day off from work to celebrate. Camo wanted a Hulk birthday cake and I thought it turned out pretty awesome! This birthday was really emotional for me because I knew it was the birthday that would send him to kindergarten. He's growing up so fast and we just love this sweet, obedient little boy. Some of his favorite things right now are swimming, doing puzzles, reading animal fact books, wrestling his little brother and daddy, anything dinosaur related, and going to movies. He is such a sweet boy. We love him and are so proud of him!!

Visit to Utah/Arizona

I haven't been on this blog in so long, but I realized I want to continue a journal of our family. I will be playing catch up with the next few posts. Back in March of this year I took a trip to visit my sisters in Utah and Arizona. I just took the boys because J had to stay back and work. Our first stop was Utah and then we drove back down to Arizona with my other sister to stay at her house for a week. While I enjoyed being with my sisters, we had a bit of some bad luck on this trip. The first couple days started out great! The boys had an awesome time hanging out with cousins. Then about a day into the trip a few of us started to come down with a nasty cough/sore throat/fever virus. Suddenly it spread through the entire family very rapidly. We were all pretty miserable. Luckily for me, Tylenol helped me to still participate in some of the fun. The second part of the bad luck was that because Larissa wasn't feeling well, Tana decided to take her skiing pass on the day we all went to the mountain. Tana was doing great until suddenly she fell and tore her acl. She ended up having a sore knee the entire rest of the trip. The drive down to Arizona was really uncomfortable and painful for her. When we arrived in Arizona, TJ came down with a fever and was up a lot in the night for most of the nights we were there. This made me extremely exhausted. Though it was fun seeing all my sisters, I was ready to get back home and healthy again. Some of the fun activities we managed to do among all the sickness was skiing, swimming, shopping, bounce houses, watching movies, eating yummy food, laughing and playing at the park.

                                                                

                                             Eating the last bit of snow in March

                                                    Feeding the farm animals.

                                                     All of the sisters

                                       Lots of lying around because of being sick.

                                            Cooking with uncle Jon

                                        Motorcycle riding with aunt Ralina

                                                        Swimming

                                             These guys were best buds!

                                           Cuddling with cousin Tyler.

                                           My beautiful nieces and I

                                                      Not feeling the best

                My throat hurt so bad to read, but when these cute boys asked, I couldn't resist.

                                            Riding with aunt Tana

                                   Happy to be reunited back home with daddy!

Maui Part 2

The next day we woke up at 2:30 in the morning to go to Haleakala National Park to watch the sunrise. It was gorgeous and so peaceful, minus the massive amount of people that showed up right before the sunrise. We got there a little bit before everyone else, so it was nice having that little bit of peace and quiet. We then hiked around a little to look at all the views.

Then that night we went out to a restaurant called Roy's Kaanapali Grill. It was located at a golf course. It was really delicious, but J and I both felt like the taco truck satisfied us more than the expensive dinner. It was still fun to get dressed up to go out together. The food was still delicious!

The next day we did the famous Road to Hana trip to see all the beautiful waterfalls in Maui. It was a super fun, but tiring day. We left fairly early in the morning because we wanted to make sure we got to everything before it got dark. We took the road all the way around even though they don't recommend you doing that. There was only one part in the road on the backside that was a little scary, but other than that it was no big deal. Here are some pictures from our adventures. 

A really cool tree in the Ke'anae Arboretum. I was eaten alive by mosquitoes and J didn't get one bite.

These next few pictures were at Wai'anapanapa State Park. There was a black sand beach and really cool caves. 

 We jumped off these rocks into the water. It was freezing, but so fun!!

We also found the beginning stages of the Red Sand Beach, but we could only go so far. There were many warning signs saying it was extremely dangerous to get to the actual Red Sand Beach area. At least we got a picture with the red sand. 

We then made our way to the Oheo Gulch(Seven Sacred Pools). It was a really cool swimming area. 

We then stopped in Hana for some delicious Thai food. I think it was called Nutcharees Authentic Thai food. We don't have any pictures of our food, but it was so delicious!! After that we made our way to Waimoku Falls. It was a 4 mile hike that took us about 2 hours, but it was gorgeous. Along the way, we passed through the bamboo forests as well as a really cool tree!

Not the best picture, but we were exhausted. It was a lot of uphill hiking.

The drive home was very long, but if you have not done the Road to Hana while visiting Maui, then I highly recommend it. It was beautiful!

The next day J went golfing, while I hung out at our resort.

Our last day on Maui, we found the most amazing beach. It was called D.T Fleming Beach State Park. The waves were really big so we did a ton of body surfing. The sand was also super soft and there were no rocks to step on. I wish we would have found this beach earlier on our vacation because we probably would have visited it a couple other times. 

The last hurrah was going to a Luau. It was a really fun night and the food was delicious!