California

Our trip to California started out with so much Excitement! We drove to Utah for one night, picked up my parents and drove the next day to Steven and Keri's house to spend our first night with them. Our first day at Venice beach started out a bit chilly, but the kids didn't care one bit. Uncle Steve taught the boys to dig for sand crabs and Christian spent the rest of our trip digging up sand crabs. At New Port Beach he also found star fish and bigger crabs under the pier. He was in heaven! Our last day at the beach we spent 8 hours there and everyone got pretty fried. We just couldn't leave, the kids were having such a good time. The girls both took naps, my parents rented beach cruisers and we just relaxed! What a great vacation.

The trip back home was a different story. We vowed to never drive again after realizing what a terror Izzy is in the car drive when she is tired. We still love her and her craziness!



Had to stop in Las Vegas and get some In-N-Out Burgers. I'm not a fan, but the kids where more than happy to eat there and keep the hats for souvenirs.

Such cute cousins! Calvin was such a sport to entertain Izzy and share his toys. How cute are they in this picture?!


The following pictures are of Venice beach with KT, Brett, Keri and Steven. What a fun time!




Digging for sand crabs. Christian couldn't be more happy with all the digging he got to do. I wish I had taken a photo of all his finds.



Nico doing his own digging for sand crabs. What a handsome kid.

Lili with her Daddy. She is a mama's girl right now, but takes time out to be with her Daddy. Her first word was "Da". I think I know who her favorite it is...



The look on Izzy's face says it all. Sorry Calvin, maybe next year she will be more kind. Let's cross our fingers!


So sad I didn't get more pictures of KT and her family. Here is Christian with Oliver, and KT.

These two have the exact same parents. I promise.

Hangin' at the pool with my sister. She is such a great sister. Everyone should have an Elli around. She's amazing!


Lili is such a water baby. My other kids liked the water. Lili LOVES the water. I'm going to have to keep my eye on her when she can walk.

Our Daddy is pooped! After a nice lunch at Husky Boy Burger, there is nothing like a nice afternoon nap in the shade while your 4 children run around and splash in the pool. How does he do it?

Dewayne!

Took the ferry to Balboa Island. Very short ride. Needs to be longer. We had enough time to get out of the car and pose for pics.

What a classic picture. I thought Elli would appreciate this one. Poor Isaac doesn't have his mom's undivided attention. Hahaha!

Matching hats!

Being lazy in one of the pull out beds. Yes, that is Izzy crashed out. She does crash once she burns all her energy. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does it is so worth it!



Christian spent a whole entire hour out catching waves on his boogie board while Jamie did some surfing. It was so fun to watch the two of them together.

Nico spent his time building castles and destroying them. Such a boy thing...

Abu spent a whole afternoon with Izzy on the shore. So much fun! Izzy LOVED spending this time with her Abu.

Yup, he's all mine! That is until his big toe nail gets yanked by the leash on his surf board, then I can't go near the toe. Thanks Jame for covering it up with a band aid after the nail came off. Wowza!





Here she is again, crashed out and napping on the beach. Only happens rarely. How lucky to have it happen twice in one week!

After all the splashing on the shore, this baby was pooped! She crashed for a while, so Abu and I rented beach cruisers and took a nice long bike ride on the beach. So much fun!

The nasty toe before the nail got clipped. There was so much sand in it, Jamie had to keep cleaning it out and putting neosporin to keep it from getting infected. Ew!

Dang that Lili! She is looking at the water. Love this picture of all my kids. I have great kiddos.

Lili was the wake up call the morning we packed it up to go home. She LOVES her brothers. I don't blame her. They are pretty awesome.

The view from our balcony. So breath taking. You don't get tired of seeing this, that is for sure.

Abu, Papa and the girls. Thanks Abu and Papa for sharing your time share with us! We had a great time. Can't wait to go back next year.

Random

It's 7:30 am and my kids have been awake for an hour. Christian is off at Camp Educo and comes back today. I'm so excited to see him and see how his trip went. I bet it was FREEZING in the mountains. Nico slept with Izzy the last two nights, ergo why they woke up so early. But, at least he is at the piano punching (literally) away at the keys so he won't have to do it after school. I have great kids. They have all given me trouble at some point in their lives, but for the most part I can't complain. The older boys are so good with their younger sisters and the girls are great when they can be understood (okay, so I'm mostly talking about Izzy). Lili is such an angel. Puts up with 3 older siblings and is such a happy baby.

We are off to California tomorrow. It will be our first time driving. I'm very nervous about driving with 4 kids all different ages. I will be sure to write about our adventures. Boy does time fly these days....

4th of July

We had our first official family reunion with my family over the 4th of July weekend. What a great time we had together! We drove out Thursday to Utah and the very next day we went to spend the day at Deer Creek with a boat and 2 wave runners. The kids just LOVED the wave runners and the boat was very busy all day with wake boarders and kids on the banana. I was sooo incredibly sore the rest of our stay. My body used muscles that I didn't even know I had while I was wake boarding. I think next time we go to the lake at the end of our stay, or I get in shape. One or the other will do. We stayed with Elli this trip. What a great host she and Dewayne are! They gave us their Master Bedroom, toothbrushes, lotion, a bag for our dirty clothes, unlimited amounts of cereal, fresh baked cookies when we first walked in from our long drive, bought all the meet for our BBQ on the 4th, made fantastic chicken salad sandwiches for the lake
and also gave me a bottle of Bath and Body lotion to take home, which I absolutely love! I couldn't have asked for a better time or stay! Thanks Elli for making our trip so memorable.

So after a day at the lake, we spend time with my parents. Then on Sunday we went to visit Jamie's sister Lisa in Logan. Pictures of the rest of our trip will follow.


Summer and Lili. Summer is such a fun niece! She is always so willing to help and LOVES baby Lili!On our drive to Utah. Going on a trip is always so much fun. The way back....not so much.
Christian is getting so big. He was in love with the wave runners. Jamie secretly let him drive one and he was on cloud nine! He kept asking us if he could tell people he drove one because we told him not to tell so the other kids wouldn't want to drive a wave runner as well.
Poor Izzy had a broken "egg" (that is what she says). She spent the time either on the boat, wave runner or next to McKynlee playing in the water or watching a movie. Look at how cute McKynlee's swimsuit is!
Lili is always such a happy camper! She started to dislike her car seat on this trip. The count down to turning her around has begun!
Me and my baby. I can't get enough of her!
Ooooh my! I love this chunky baby. I got her these cute shades online to protect her eyes. She looks so stinkin' cute.
Kids waiting for boat rides. Fun time with cousins!
And of course a pic of my sister Elisa and I. Elisa looks tan because she has actually gotten to go to the pool this summer. I on the other hand have stayed inside with a baby and a 2 year old with a broken leg. At least Izzy got a water proof cast after two weeks with a whole leg cast....that was torture.
Me oh my! Look at my cute nephew Caleb. If I was holding Lili or anybody else, he would want to come over and be held. It didn't matter that we hardly saw each other, he just wanted that one on one attention. Love this little guy!


Lili with her Tia Sandee! Sandee organized and planned pretty much the whole reunion. I love having her in our family. She is a great sister and so much fun....wait till you see her new kitchen! Oh my, she is one talented lady.
Izzy learned to say "punch it!" while riding the wave runner. She still talks about riding on it to this day. So much fun.
A Brazilian, Argentinian and American at the grill. No make shift BBQ or Asado or Churrasco could have been better. Around 5 pm, we were having so much fun, we decided to stay rather than go home. So, Andres took our new friend Ricardo (from Brazil), bought some meet and coals and an hour later we had yummy chicken, sausage and steak. Yumm!
Izzy and her Papa. There are no two more happy people on the planet when this photo was taken.

It's Been a While...

It's been a while since I have blogged. Don't even know where to begin. I'm waiting for the site for my school to come back up, so I thought I'd take a minute to update. Lili is doing so good! She is growing and doing so many things. At her last Doctors Appt she weighed 17 lbs putting her in the 25% for weight and 10% for height. She is very compact! Izzy broke her leg a bit over a week ago and has been nothing short of a pill. I am her legs, fun and entertainment, so my days are Loooooong. She will get a new cast next Monday that will allow her to walk, yipee!


This is the day after she broke her leg. She is wearing a soft cast. Monday she got a super cool sparkly orange cast. She keeps saying "my egg is broken"!
Christian LOVES to hold Lili. Look how big they both look here. How fun this baby is! We all love her.


The boys took a fly fishing class with Jamie last Saturday and had such a great time. They can't wait to go fly fishing again. How fun they can do stuff like that in Colorado!

Hospital Pics of Lili's Birth

This may be a snoozer to some, but it's for my own documentation and family history. I have been wanting to document Lili's birth. So here we go. I woke up on 9/11 to another gorgeous day in Colorado. I asked Jamie if I could go get a pedicure that morning before it got crazy with moving the boys room downstairs and finishing trim work. So off I went. I sat in the message chair and noticed I was having contractions regularly, but they weren't very hard. I went home helped with the moving of some items downstairs. Aunt Roni came over with Sheridan and helped get stuff moved. I noticed that I needed to stop for contractions because they were getting hard. Roni told me the story of one of her births that went so quickly, she didn't have time for an epidural. By 5 pm I got nervous and thought that I really wanted that epidural so I wasn't going to take any chances. Jamie drove as fast as he could (he was so excited about this) to the Parker Hospital. We got there around 5:30 and I was dialated to a 4. Not much, but i knew that if I transitioned quickly like I did with Izzy, the baby wasn't too far off. The nurse had to check with the doctor before I got admitted, but said if he said 'yes', I could get my epidural right away. Well, the anesthesiologist came and started my epidural around 6:30. It took him until 8 pm, to get it in right because the first time he put it in, it didn't work and he kept asking me if I could feel my contractions, which I totally could. During this time, the on call Doctor comes to break my water. Thinking I have my epidural all set, he procedes to break my water-very unpleasant experience. When he's done he asks me if I was sure that my water didn't break at home. I tell him no. So, he tries one more time and says, "strange, I'm pretty sure I broke your water, but nothing has come out." I don't think much of this and continue with the Anesthesiologist. The Anesthesiologist thinks there must be a kink in the tube going into my spine, so he pulls it out a bit. Well, that doesn't work either, so he pulls out the whole thing and does it again. The second time around didn't hurt as bad going in, so I knew it would work. It did and I was one happy pregnant lady. Well, all that moving around and stress must have slowed my labor, so I got pitocin started at a 1. I called Elisa, told her I was on my way, and she decided to stop by with Hallie and Summer to visit. I asked for a foot rub, which feels totally funky when you are numb from the waist down. By 10:00 pm I begin to feel like I'm going to pass out, so Elisa leaves knowing that I'm getting close. I tell the nurse and she checks me to find I'm only 5 centimeters dialated. She tells me to switch sides, that may help. I do, but it doesn't, so about 15 min later I tell her I still don't feel good, so she checks me again and low and behold, I'm almost 9 centimeters, so she runs out to call the Doctor. So, we wait for the doctor who shows up around 10:00ish. I push a bunch of times and Liliana is born at 10:38. As she is being born, the doctor says "wow, I haven't seen this much meconium in a LONG time." I don't know what to think of this, all I know is that this means my baby is going to be swept away right away in order to make sure she doesn't asperate the meconium. This is the reason why no amniotic fluid. Poor Lili was COVERED in her own poop. I remember looking at her as she is being taken to her crib and thinking "wow, she is covered in black/green poop". All doctors and nurses were saying how chubby she was. Everyone in the room was taking bets on her weight-none under 8 pounds, I thought for sure she would be at least 8 if not 9 pounds. Nope, she came in at 7 lbs 1.8 oz and 19 inches long. She was just so swollen!
Lili was born at 10:38 pm. By 6:00 a.m she was in the NICU. I got to hold her and have her in my room for a little over 7 hours before she turned blue. I remember that first night with Lili she was fussy. I couldn't get her to calm down enough to sleep. I had fed her 3 times in 7 hours and by 5:00 a.m. I was exhausted so I called a nurse and asked her to take Lili for a couple hours so I could get some sleep. That was heavenly intervention and a tender mercy I will never forget. I will say that the Parker Hospital has a room in policy where they don't have a nursery, only a NICU. They expect all moms to have the babies in their rooms over night. My nurse was so kind to take Lili and sit with her in the NICU. She was holding Lili when she turned so blue, she later told me she was almost "black". The nurse holding her was talking to another nurse who pointed out how blue Lili had turned. They were already in the NICU so she was rushed to a bed and placed on a warmer, given oxygen and hooked up to a machine to check her vitals. The sweet nurse came to tell me at around 5:40 a.m. and that is the moment my whole world changed.

I don't like to think about what would have happened had I not asked for Lili to be taken or if the Nurse had not taken her. I would have put her back to sleep for the fourth time that night and woken up to a completely different scenario. I thank my Heavenly Father everyday for my sweet precious baby. We all have a purpose here on earth and I know Lili has much yet to accomplish. I just hope as Parents, Jamie and I will be able to give her what she needs spiritually and physically.



Her first couple hours in the NICU. She was such a good NICU baby! I loved her from the first moment. It's amazing how you can feel such a connection to such a little person you just met for the first time on this earth. I love her!