Leaves

In the fall, we took a Saturday afternoon to rake up some leaves.  The kids really wanted to jump into a big pile, and we only have one small peach tree in our yard, so we borrowed some of our neighbor's leaves.  :)  They had a blast and also had a lesson in working until the job is done.  That's a hard lesson to learn. 

Apparently our neighbor had some small rakes that they let us borrow.  Something about small equipment helps the kids stay interested.  ha ha

You can't really see it very well, but look at sadie bending down to pick up the leaves.  She is so flexible!  And also see my shadow...I'm sitting in a lawn chair holding a sleeping baby.  :)

Almost ready to jump!!!

They have fun jumping and throwing the leaves around for about 10 minutes.  

Then the girls helped Rob put all the leaves into our green bin.  Then they got a ride.  :)

Pumpkin patch

 We took the kids to the pumpkin patch the Saturday before Halloween.  It's a place just about a mile away from our house.  And the weather was so nice and warm.  It was great!  All of the kids picked out their own pumpkin.  They chose some really good ones!

 The shadows are bad here, but Sadie Zac and Emery are sticking their faces through those holes.  

 Rob dressed up for the occasion...acutaly one of the kids brought this and we ended up carrying it.  I knew that was going to happen...

 For Family Home Evening, we carved our pumpkins.  It is so nice that Sadie and Zac can do their own now.  Zac really hates touching the "guts" on the inside.  

 Rob helped Emery carve hers and Riley put a Pumpkin tatoo on hers.  I think we will do those again next year.  So easy and cool looking.

Everyone with their pumpkins.  I love how they turned out!

Halloween 2017

This year Sadie and Emery wanted to dress up as Kitara and Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender.  That meant that I had to make their costumes.  I was hoping everyone would just want to be what they were last year, but of course, it's not fun to be the same thing two years in a row! So I whipped up some costumes very last minute so they are not very well made...but it did the trick. 

Here are all the kids outside our ward building getting ready for the trunk or treat.  

Every year, the primary is in charge of planning the ward Halloween party.  This year it was more stressful than normal because I had Finley who was about 4 weeks old at the time.  It made setting up tables and chairs very interesting.  Fortunately, Sadie and Zac were very helpful and helped us get everything set up just in time even though the person with the keys showed up at 5:25 instead of 5 like we had discussed.   Everything went well I think.  It was such a relief to have the party over and done with.

Emery and her friend Stella and Zac showing off the skills of the young women who painted their faces.  :)

Two days after the ward trunk or treat, Rob invited us to his work Halloween party.  We have never gone, but this year we decided to go.  The girls wore their costumes from last year which was fun. There was so much candy and so many people.  It was pretty fun.  And bonus...Finley didn't scream in her car seat on the way there and back.  That is pretty much the only time she has gone a whole trip without crying in her car seat.  It hasn't happened since. 

The kids with Rob...I got to carry the cute little pumpkin Finley. 

On Halloween Sadie had an orthodontist appointment.  They handed out these festive donuts.  Score!

This was on actual Halloween night before the kids headed out trick or treating.  We ended up with SO MUCH CANDY!  But the kids had such a good time.  It's so fun seeing them enjoy holidays. 

Witches at Gardner Village

Of course we had to visit the witches at Gardner Village again this year.  It's tradition!  We went with some friends.  This time we went on a Friday afternoon...usually I go in the morning before the shops are even opened and its not very busy.  It was so busy on a Friday afternoon!  Next year we will go back to our morning visit.  :)  It was still fun to see the witches and be with friends. 

They had this witch set up this year with a long broomstick for a photo op.  It was funny trying to get all the kids on the broom.  

Family!  I left Finley at home with Rob.  It was his last day of Paternity leave.  

Emery and her friend Maggie.

My kids are funny because they will find a spot and pose and tell me to take a picture.  I love it.  

I love that Gardner Village does this every year.. We will see if we make it to see the Elves this year.

Fall colors in the canyon

 Every year we talk about seeing the fall colors in the canyon.  It seems like every year we miss them.  We go after the leaves have all fallen off the trees.  This year, a couple weeks after Finley was born we decided to go for a drive up the canyon.  This is when we discovered that Finley hates her carseat.  She will just scream and cry the whole trip.  We have had 2 or 3 successful trips in the car with her, but mostly I just stay home so I don't have to hear her scream.  She gets so upset that she throws up on herself.  It's really hard to listen to.  Anyway...We didn't miss the colors this year!  And it was breathtaking.  So pretty.

 These pictures don't even do it justice.  But it's all I got besides the memories in my head.

 We got out and walked around for a while...mostly because we wanted to let Finley out of her car seat to calm down. 

 We found some really pretty orange and red leaves. 

 

 I love these guys...they find fun spots to pose for pictures.  And then they won't leave until I snap a picture.  ha ha

 Riley...

I'm so grateful for the beauty of the earth. Whenever I see a beautiful sunset, or the magnificent mountains or beautiful fall colors I am so grateful that Heavenly Father loves us enough to make the earth beautiful for us to enjoy.  :)

Finley Anne

Well, my official due date is this coming Thursday, and I am so glad that we already have had Finley here for 3 weeks! It was so awesome to skip the last 4 weeks of my pregnancy, only because Finley was healthy and ready to make her debut!  Here is a little bit of the story of her arrival.

On Saturday September 16th I woke up around 4am to go to the bathroom.  This happened every night multiple times.  As I sat up to walk to the bathroom something felt a little bit different.  I sat on the bed for a while before moving and Rob asked it everything was ok.  I told him I think my water broke, but I'm not sure.  So I went to the bathroom and tried to go back to sleep.  I pretty much knew at that point that my water had broken and that I would be going to the hospital that day, but I had so much on my to do list before the baby came that I was in denial.  I had to clean up the house, wash the baby clothes, pack my hospital bag, buy Zac a new winter coat because his was too small and it was getting chilly...etc.  So I just watched the clock tick by while I thought of all the things I wouldn't be getting done before the baby came.

By 6 or so I got up and took a shower. I wasn't really having any contractions, but I was a little bit nervous (and so was Rob) that I would start labor quickly and have the baby pretty fast.  So Rob started calling Crys to see if she could come be with the kids while we went to the hospital.  Thankfully she said she could so I got some things done around the house quickly before they got there.  

Here is a picture of my big 36 week belly before we left.  I'm pretty happy that I didn't have to wait any longer to meet little Finley.  :)  Not much room left in there. 

We got to the hospital and Rob was hungry so we stopped at Chick-fil-a (right across the street from the hospital) and went through the drive thru.  As we were stuck between cars in the drive thru waiting for our food, my water came gushing out even more.  I couldn't stop it.  Fortunately, I was prepared and had towels and such.  When we got to the hospital and walked in, I carried a towel with me and the nurses knew what that meant.  ha ha.  They got me to a room and were really nice. 

I had to have an iv because I had been tested for group B Strep the day before but the results hadn't come back yet.  So just in case, they gave me some penicillin just as a precaution.  And because i wasn't really having any consistent contractions, they started me on pitocin.  I wasn't wanting an epidural so I was nervous about the pitocin, but decided I would try it and if I needed one, I would get an epidural.  I spent a lot of time walking the halls of the hospital and bouncing on the exercise ball. 

The contractions started to get pretty intense around 3:30pm.  My nurse was amazing and was very encouraging.  She wanted me to be successful at doing it without an epidural.  She would push on my hips during contractions or give me encouragement. I've never had such an awesome nurse.  When I was ready to give up she told me "I think she is making her move...you can do this!"  And sure enough, within a couple of minutes she checked me and said I was at a 9.5.  I told her I was ready to push and of course, she told me not to because the doctor wasn't there yet.  She was paging nurses and my doctor like crazy trying to get them to come.  She was running around the room trying to get everything ready and nobody was showing up.  After about 2 minutes, my doctor walks in very calmly (while the nurse was frantically calling whoever she could).  She asked him "Did you get my page?!?!" and he very calmly said "yeah".  ha ha.  All the while, I'm on the bed trying to breath so I don't push.  

After the doctor got there...it took about 2 minutes and Finley was born.  :)

I was so happy that she wasn't a tiny baby.  She was a healthy 7 pounds 4 oz.  Which is tiny for us...but I was worried she would be really small because she was only 36 weeks. 

I didn't take a ton of pictures this time...I mostly just enjoyed holding her for the first few hours.  She was born around 4:24 pm.  The funny thing is that my "baby shower/ girls night" was planned for that night and the ladies were meeting at 4:30 to go out to dinner.  I missed out on my own party, but I'm glad I was able to text them all a picture of Finley while they were together.

Rob went home around 9pm so Crys and Alan could go home.  I stayed at the hospital and he came back in the morning with the kids. 

They all loved meeting their new sister.  

They didn't love watching her get a bath because she cried up until they started washing her hair.  ha ha.  Rob is such a good dad.  He looks good with a baby in his arms.

They finally weighed her a few hours after she was born.  I made sure to take a picture with the weight showing...with Riley, Rob took a picture of her on the scale, but totally cut off the weight!  ha ha.

Cute newborn baby.

Our five kids.  We love them all.

The traditional first diaper change done by daddy...actually I think this was the second poopy diaper she had.  I was there alone when she had her first one, so I got to change that.

Even though they usually don't let babies who were born that early go home before 48 hours, we got to take Finley home after 24 hours in the hospital.  It was so good to be home.  My parent's drove up the day after she was born and my mom stayed for a couple weeks to help.  And she is so so helpful.  Thanks mom!  I'm definitely not getting even half as much stuff done with her gone, but that's ok.  Finley is worth it.  

Finley's first bath at home.  And if you look closely, you can see the yummy caramel apples that we made earlier that day.  Yum.