February 23-24, 2016 Baby Time!

The morning of the 23rd I woke up, not to a phone call from the hospital, just woke up but was still tired from our late night of trying to get the house ready for baby to come, so I laid there for a little bit then heard a text go off, but I really didn't want to have to deal with telling people that we hadn't gotten a call yet.  A half hour later at 8:00 we got our phone call from the hospital, they wanted us to get there at 9:00.  The text was from my dad letting me know that they were all awake and wondering how I was doing.  I text him back to let him know we had just gotten our phone call, then just laid there for a little bit.  It was all still so surreal.  Ben snuggled me for a bit then I finally rolled out of bed and took a quick shower, once I got out just braid my wet hair in a quick side braid thinking that would probably be most comfortable for the day ahead.  Ben tried to get me to eat some breakfast, he offered to make me something, but I ended up settling on a granola bar, I just was still feeling so anxious I couldn't hardly eat, even the granola bar was hard to eat.  On our drive over I had a few contractions and had a small glimpse of what it might be like to be in labor and driving to the hospital, without the panic of getting there in time that several of my friends have had!  It definitely isn't the most pleasant feeling to have contractions while driving!

When we got to the hospital they got us settled into a room, (I was wondering if it was the same one we had with Timber.)  Really I think all our rooms for babies have been close to that room though.  I recognized the nurse that was getting us all set up in the room, she had been my after delivery nurse with Timber!  We'll call her nurse M.  She said she had moved down to labor and delivery a few months ago.  She was only the nurse getting us set up in the room though, our nurse was busy when we got there so she was helping out.  The girl that was going to be my nurse got there right as it was time to put the iv in.  We'll call her nurse B.  I know both their names, just not sure if I'm supposed to keep their names private, so we'll go for their initials!  Nurse M asked nurse B if she wanted her to start the iv for her, nurse B said sure.  I like it better when the iv is in my left arm, cuz I barely move my arm when it has an iv in, it really bugs me, ha!  I also have this weird thing with being equal, Hunter and Timber I had asked them to put it in my left arm, but with Aspen I had been having a shy moment and hadn't asked so they put it in my right arm.  So my weird equal thing took over and I didn't ask them to put it in my left arm so that I would have equal scars, yes I'm weird, but I also figure that's the side they like to do it on because that's how the room is set up anyways.  As nurse M started to do my iv it became apparent that she isn't as familiar with doing iv's as nurse B, because she had to keep asking nurse B questions and if it looked ok, nurse B had her test it and quickly said nope!  She had blown my vein.  I've never had that happen before, all the other nurses have never had a problem getting my iv's in first try.  When she took the iv out, she commented that I was a bleeder, which I hadn't had that comment with any of my other pregnancies, but had also gotten that comment when I had gotten my whooping cough shot with this pregnancy, weird.  Since she had blown my vein she had to switch to my left arm, which really for functionability is really better for me anyways.  She got the next one in just fine.  And yes my tiny iv scars are off balance haha!  Really not a big deal at all, 2 on one arm and 3 on the other, and way too small for anyone but me to even notice!  After she got the iv in nurse M left us in nurse B's care.

Nurse B asked me if I had had breakfast before she turned the pitocin on.  I told her about my granola bar and she tried to convince me to let her get me some breakfast, but I still just had too many knots in my stomach to even think about eating breakfast.  When she checked me she said that she was having a hard time feeling babies head, that baby was still up kind of high, she said "see how I can bounce baby like a basketball," just what I wanted her to be doing while she was checking me!  Ha!  She then explained that the doc would have to wait until baby came down more before he could break my water otherwise the umbilical cord could come out first and "that's when me and you would get really comfy."  She would have to hold it in if that happened, so ya we were definitely hoping for baby to come down where it should be!  This first check had already given me a lot of confidence in nurse B!  With Timber the nurse said she couldn't really feel Timbers head and so we had had to wait until my doctor could come over and do a 10 sec ultrasound to make sure she was head down.  So when nurse B couldn't feel for sure with this baby I thought we were going to have to wait for the doc again, but she knew just what to do to get baby down where she could make sure it was a head so that we could start the pitocin.  We started the pitocin at 10:30 and I was already a 4.  I had already had several contractions since they had hooked me up to the monitors and before they had started the pitocin, so talking with nurse B we were hopeful for a pretty quick labor.  I told her how long the others had been and that they had all happened around shift change so I doubted it, but that I would love it if it happened!  She said that most labors get faster each time, so she was hopeful for baby to be her by 3 or 4, since Timber came in 7 hours.  That sounded wonderful to me... that's not what happened though!

We ended up absolutely loving nurse B!  She was a traveling nurse so is only at each place for a few months before she goes to another place that needs her.  She was doing this to put her hubby through school, he was also a labor and delivery nurse (what?? I guy labor and delivery nurse??  She wasn't surprised at all at our surprise at that!)  He was going back to school to become a nurse practitioner.  They had little kids and this was the first year that their oldest was in school.  When she signed on for this hospital they agreed to keep her for the school year so that she wouldn't have to move her daughter during the year.  She has worked in a bunch of different places, Hawaii being one of them!  I thought being a traveling nurse sounded so crazy at first, but the more we talked to her about it the cooler it sounded!  Although they were ready for her hubby to be done with school so that they could settle down and buy a home now that their kids were in school.

When I told her that I was hoping to not get an epidural she was very supportive.  She gave me a bunch of advise and kept saying "we can do this!"  I really felt like she was on our "team!"  I haven't ever had a problem with any of my other nurses, but Nurse B is by far my favorite!  I asked her if she had had any of hers without an epidural, she snorted out a laugh and said, "NO!"  Then proceeded to tell us that she had thought of maybe trying not to, but knew her hubby wouldn't be able to handle seeing her in pain, so it was just better all around for her to get the epidural.  But if I wanted to do it without she would help me through it!  She was great!  We also still didn't have a name picked out for boy or girl, we were leaning towards Meadow for a girl and Ben really wanted Terrain for a boy (since I vetoed his Trip and Trail) but every time he said it all I could think was "Choo, Choo!"  I liked how it looked written out, but it just sounded to close to train for me.  I kind of liked Canyon, and still really wanted Easton, but Ben vetoed Easton, he has a cousin with a boy named Easton.  Nurse B kept coming up with names and ideas for us.  She even talked a little hunting with Ben.  She also polled all the other nurses for what names they liked that fit with our other names.  Quite often when she would come to check on me she would have another name for us to think about.

My doctor wasn't able to come check on me until 12:30.  And baby had moved down far enough that he was able to break my water then.  It was the most unpleasant water breaking of all my kids!  He kept trying to break it and it just wasn't wanting to break!  With most of my others I really could just feel tugging, so it was just awkward not painful.  But with this one it kind of hurt, and since it wasn't breaking very easily he kept pushing on my belly trying to help it break with the pressure too.  Once he finally got it to break he let me know that I was a 5 almost a 6 and so far things were looking good!

Ben left to get lunch right after he broke my water.  Nurse B told him that if he wanted to get lunch now was the time and to be quick about it because labor should pick up pretty quickly now that my water was broken.  I watched the game show network most of the morning and throughout Ben being gone, he really was very quick!  And up until that point the labor hadn't been bad.  Like nurse B said, it did start to pick up.  I felt it a lot in my lower back!  As the contractions got stronger I had to have Ben push on my back to help counter the pain.  I had to keep asking Ben to push harder, and then when the contraction would end we would just kind of look at each other.  In between some of the contractions I asked him if he was having to push very hard, and he said that he was pushing as hard as he could and was having to get leverage by pushing his foot against the couch.  Nurse B could see that it was wearing Ben out to push on my back (I was having him do it every contraction) and took several turns doing it instead.  I appreciated that, but she really couldn't push as hard as Ben, so it was better when he did it, but I didn't say anything.  I hate the feeling on leaking, so I pretty well was staying in bed unless I had to use the bathroom.  As the contractions got worse nurse B suggested walking around the room a little and gave me underwear and a pad (why has no one ever offered that to me before???)  The underwear and pad made me a lot happier than she probably knew!  I'm not really a wanderer, so walking around the room just seemed kind of awkward to me, but I did it anyways hoping it would help.  Ben would pretty well stay by my side and let me lean into him and hold me while I had contractions.  My walking around was making it hard to monitor baby so after a little bit of wandering nurse B had me lay on my side for a little while so that she could make sure that baby was doing ok.  Babies heart rate had gone down a little, so she had me stay on my side and gave me oxygen for a bit.  She also checked me again and I was at a 7.  I don't know if everyone is always hooked up to a blood pressure cuff, or if it's just because I get high blood pressure, but every time it would check my blood pressure I could like feel my blood pumping in my arm where the vein had blown, I did not love that feeling.  I kept imagining blood squirting out of my arm there, and when I took the cotton off later it did have a lot of blood on it, a lot more than any of my other iv's ever had!  After babies heart had calmed down for a while nurse B let me get up again and she brought a labor ball for me to try.  Again I just felt super awkward bouncing on the thing, but she said it helps some women, so I gave it a go.  After a while she had me lay in bed to monitor baby again and check me.  I was still a 7.  The time she had been hopeful for us to have baby by was quickly passing, which didn't surprise me, but was a bummer anyways.  Since babies heart rate would go down sometimes she put a monitor in babies head so they could keep better track of it.  They had to do this kind of monitor when I had Hunter too, so I wasn't too worried about it.  When she checked me and I was still a 7 I was pretty discouraged.  Nurse B kept being very encouraging though and talked through a few options to try to help things along and hopefully help relieve the contractions or at least distract from them, we ended up deciding on a shower.  Really labor and everything about it is just super awkward.  Yes again, I just felt awkward being in the shower, especially since the doc came to check on me while I was in there!  He didn't come in the bathroom, that probably came out wrong.  But since he was coming to check on me I ended my shower (by the way Ben was right there on the other side of the curtain holding my hand through every contraction while I was in the shower) and got dried off and back into my robe (is that what they are called??)  I climbed back into the bed and nurse B changed all the monitor straps to dry ones for me.  Up until this point she had kept commenting on how I was still smiling through the contractions, but I had now become very quiet.  I don't think I spoke once to Ben while I was in the shower.  It was really hurting and I just kept hoping the shower was doing something and that baby was going to come soon!  I was just really hoping that the shower had gotten me past a 7!  I also knew that if I talked I would end up saying how much it was hurting and I knew if I voiced that that I would be done.  In the shower I had thought as long as I'm past a 7 now I can do this!  Shortly after my dry monitors got put back on my doctor came back to check me...  I was a 7 +.  Seriously!  I think everyone in the room could feel the change in me, and probably see the defeat in my eyes. 

I didn't say anything until after both my doctor and nurse B left the room.  I was standing up and just leaned into Ben and said, "This sucks."  And started to cry a little,  I had wanted so bad to not have an epidural, but I was so tired!  So tired that I would fall asleep for a few seconds in between contractions standing up leaning against Ben.  All I wanted was to sleep and not be hurting anymore.  Like I said I knew that if I voiced my frustrations that I wouldn't be able to keep going, and the second I said those 2 words to Ben I knew I was giving up.  It was hard to swallow my pride, but I knew I was too tired to deal with the pain any longer.  When nurse B came back to check on me, I think she could tell I was giving up just by the look on my face.  She did tell me that she thought the shower had done more good than I thought, but that it was up to me what I wanted.  I kind of think she felt bad for me, I think she saw and felt my frustration.  I did end up saying to go ahead with the epidural though.  The anesthesiologist was in with a c-section when I told her I wanted the epidural so I had to wait about an half hour.  It's weird how once you have decided to get the epidural the contractions feel so much worse!  Ha!  I just laid in bed not saying anything just feeling super grumpy and trying to deal with the contractions until the anesthesiologist could come.

I swear this anesthesiologist took a lot longer to get all his stuff ready than the others!  He really wasn't super friendly, and since I was just done with everything I don't think I was very sociable to him.  Also because of my not so pleasant experience with getting the epidural with Aspen, and then jumping with Timber, I was pretty nervous about getting the epidural.  He chatted with me about why I was nervous and I told him about both of those and he said he would do his best.  This experience was definitely better than the girls, but I felt it a lot more than with Hunter and was having some pretty good contractions throughout the whole thing too.  I think he was probably going slow since I was so nervous, but it really felt like it took him FOREVER to get it in!  Once he did and they had me settled back on my bed, then I turned super sweet again, haha!  I'm pretty sure I told him he was awesome!  For those few seconds right after getting the epidural all the tension in the room melted away.  When I got my epidural with Hunter I fell asleep for an hour then woke up and it was time to push, I was really hoping the same thing would happen this time.  But babies heart rate was kind of struggling right after the epidural, so I got rotated onto my side and oxygen mask hooked up to my face, and it stayed there the rest of the time.  It was about 5:00 when I got the epidural and when nurse B checked me right after I was to an 8.

It really probably was a good thing that I ended up getting the epidural, even with me feeling completely relaxed babies heart rate was still having a hard time, so they were watching the monitors really closely.  The combination of exhaustion and the oxygen mask slightly blowing air into my eyes I couldn't hardly keep them open.  But if I slept at all it wasn't much, maybe a few minutes here and there.  Shortly after things settled down from getting the epidural and getting settled down a certain way and oxygen on, shift change hit.  That new nurse wouldn't leave me alone!  I know it's her job to ask all the questions and get up to date on what's going on with me, but I was so tired!  I just wanted her to leave me alone!  She didn't though.  After she went through all of that she asked if she could check me and sure enough it was time to have a baby!

On all my others when they have said that it's time I've gotten a surge of energy, not this time.  I didn't care.  I was exhausted and just wanted to be left alone.  I didn't ever voice any of that, but in all their hustle and bustle to get everything ready for when the doc arrived I was still trying to ignore them and sleep, haha!  When the doc got there he took a poll of everyone to see if they thought baby was going to be a boy or a girl.  I think it was about half and half.  The doc told Ben that he was in charge of calling it out!  He also asked me how big our other babies were and as I told him their weights, I told him that I thought this baby seemed bigger.  He felt my belly and said he was guessing for at least 8 lbs!  And with that we were ready, or they were ready.  I was still so tired that I didn't even think to tell them that I felt super uncomfortable and really wanted help getting shifted up a little (got to love not having enough control to move myself up.)  As the contractions would hit and they would tell me to push I know I didn't have as much force behind my pushes as I did with my others.  With my others I was going to get the thing out!  With this baby it was more like fine, I guess I'll do it so you'll leave me alone.  But I really couldn't decide if I was doing much, and I'm still not convinced that I really did much of the work.  It definitely seemed like the doc was "helping" more than he had to on the others.  I'm not sure how long it took to push baby out, I know it was longer than the others because of my slacker pushes, but it still wasn't very long.  As baby came out, there was like a pause as everyone was checking parts, then Ben said "It's a boy!" with a little excited hop!  That's when I finally came out of my tired stupor and said "Really!"  I don't think I had realized how much I was hoping this was a boy for Ben (he really wanted another son) until it was a boy and there was a sense of relief!  Not to mention my patriarchal blessing says I would have sons and daughters!  We were feeling like 4 was a good number for us, but I knew if it was a girl then I was supposed to have another!

They asked if I wanted to do skin to skin before we had baby and I had said "I don't know, I guess... They get washed off first though, right?"  They told me that they clean them up a bit yes.  So after we had him they cleaned him a little then snuggled him into me. 

He still had quite a bit of the white stuff on him (which I think is so gross!)  I instantly asked if they were going to clean him off more and they told me that they have found it's better to leave it on, but when we get up to the mom and baby unit they can wash it all off if I want.  There was a lot of it around his nose and it was really stressing me out that he couldn't breath, so the second they weren't looking I used his blanket to try to at least get it out of his nose!

It's amazing how instantly you fall in love with your baby!  One of the first things I noticed on him was that he has a butt chin!  Now that my baby has one, I really think there's got to be a better term for it!  It sounds terrible!

Once they left us to snuggle our baby for a little bit we called our kiddos and let them know that they had a new brother!  Since it was close to bed time we decided to not have them come meet him that night.  We also talked to my mom about Aspen, and she still wasn't feeling well, so they hadn't ended up taking her to school.  They said she seemed OK in the morning but as the day went on she kept getting worse and worse.

That's a happy daddy right there!

Our doctor was right!  He was 8 lbs 6 oz!  More than a pound bigger than our next biggest baby!

He has tons of hair!

Ben couldn't hardly wait to send out a text that we had a boy!  Our phones were buzzing like crazy for like an hour after we had him, it was kind of driving me crazy!  Everyone was asking his name, which we still hadn't decided on, so they were sending a million suggestions, I just wanted to throw the phone out the window.  I didn't touch my phone until we had gotten to our mom and baby room and had eaten dinner and Ben had fallen asleep.  Up until that point Ben had been texting both of our families on both of our phones.  Once things settled down I took this picture and sent it to Brandi to show her all his hair.

In the morning our nurse asked if I wanted her to give him his bath now.  I was very excited to have him all cleaned up!  She even did his hair!  So of course I had to send this picture to Brandi to show his hair off even better!

Check it out!  It's so full all over his head!

Funny story, my nurse when she saw who I had listed for my babies doctor said that she hadn't seen him in years and wondered if he would just send one of the other doctors that work with him in instead.  He's a family practitioner and he used to also deliver babies but has stopped doing OB visits.  He has been Ben's doctor for most of his life and was the doctor that stitched up Ben's knee when he cut it open with a saw before his mission.  So I don't know if that's why he came or maybe we are just the only ones that still have him as our babies doctor instead of a pediatrician, but he did come.  And he picked up our baby boy and said, "8 pound baby, 10 pound head!"  Then after checking baby out asked me how I was doing, haha!  I hadn't even torn, yay!

During the day there was a student nurse that would come in with our regular nurse.  The student was a guy and you could tell he felt super awkward being in a mom and baby unit!  Since Kira recently had gone through the nursing program I figured his program was probably similar to hers and he probably didn't get to pick where he did his clinicals!  Anytime my nurse would check me he would stand far away, which I appreciated.  He did make the comment to Ben that he had only ever been on his side of having babies, not this side and it was definitely different, haha!

From the moment the sun came up I was ready to leave!  I don't sleep well at the hospital and I was still super tired!  Ben seemed like he slept decent, but I really didn't.  Baby was also sleepy and was having a hard time staying awake long enough to nurse.  Since our nurse hadn't really seen him nurse very well she was a bit nervous to let us go.  She ended up giving me a nipple shield because he was really struggling on one side way worse than the other.  I had had to use a nipple shield with Hunter in order to heal up, so I didn't really think anything of it.  The lactation specialist came and chatted with me a little and was concerned about the nipple shield, but then when I told her my history with nursing my other 3 successfully for a year each she seemed to be fine.  Finally our baby was nursing pretty good and our nurse happening to come in when he was so felt better about letting us go home.  But we still had to wait for the test results of his bilirubin and needed to fill out the birth certificate form... which meant we needed to pick a name!  The entire time waiting for the bilirubin test results we were discussing names, and finally not long before we left we finally decided and wrote it down:

Hoyt Emery Ewell

Hoyt is the brand of bow that Ben shoots (and he likes to point out also me, even though I haven't shot mine in years.)  And Emery is Ben's middle name.

When we got the bilirubin test results they were a little high.  They seemed to think I would just know what that meant and what to do, but none of mine had had it come back high, so they had to explain what would happen next to me.  We would have to take him in to get it tested again the next several days in a row and to keep him in indirect sunlight as much as possible, then hopefully the numbers would go down.  If they didn't we would have to come back to the hospital and put him in lights to help it.  They said it wasn't super high, just high enough that they wanted to watch it and make sure it didn't go up.

It was late afternoon when we were finally free to go home!  We didn't end up having any visitors come to the hospital.  I actually really liked that it was just me and Ben and Hoyt, it was just so peaceful.  He looks so tiny in his seat!  Even though he was quite a bit bigger than any of our other babies!  This is the same car seat we used for both the girls, it still has another year before it expires phew!  Timber was actually still using this car seat up until a few weeks before we had Hoyt, we figured we needed to give her a few weeks to get used to it being called the baby seat and not being hers anymore before he got here!  We did the switch when we bought our Sequoia.  I don't think I posted about that, we have been trying to sell our car for several months with no luck.  We decided to also sell the truck since it had bucket seats in the front so that we could find a truck with 6 seats.  Shortly after the truck sold I saw a Sequoia for sale on facebook, we have always wanted a Sequoia, and had been looking for one.  Ben found a few that he wanted but they were all up north so hadn't been able to see them.  He was going to look at one when he went up to the hunt expo, but I think it didn't end up working out for them to be able to get together.  So when we found this Sequoia we were pleasantly surprised to see that it was listed in Toquerville!  And it was a little less expensive than the others we had been looking at.  Ben ended up going and test driving it, and it worked great and was just what we were wanting and for the price we wanted to pay!  And when we went to pick it up (which was my first time seeing it in person, people think I'm crazy for that, but I trust Ben's judgement completely, so I wasn't worried about it) we found out that the people we were buying it from had once lived in Kanab and my dad had been his scout leader, small world!

My parents brought our kiddos over shortly after we got home.  We had to tell Aspen to stay a ways away from Hoyt since she was still sick, and she wouldn't get to hold him until she was better.  She was so sweet about it and was really good about staying a safe distance away even though she really wanted to snuggle him!

Hunter checking out his brother, they all think he's pretty cool!

Timber selfie!  This cute girl is officially a big sister!!  She has handled it pretty well, she does wish she could have my lap anytime she wants it, but will share it pretty well with her baby brother!

It took me over a year to finally write this post!  For months now I kept thinking I need to just do it, but it was such an emotional experience for me that it was hard to think of writing it.  Putting words to the emotions I felt, just felt daunting.  I'm so glad I finally got Hoyt's story written up though!  We love this little guy so much and are so happy he's a part of our family!

February 2016

February!  We made it!  The month when our baby would join us!  Even though I was still holding out hopes that I would be able to go 2 days past my due date and have baby on March 2nd, we were in the home stretch!  Down to weekly doc appointments, which are good and bad for obvious (to moms) reasons.  Don't love the checks, but at least they mean you almost have that baby in your arms!!  At some point during my appointments my doctor had mentioned that he knew that even if he put me on bed rest I probably wouldn't be able to do it very well with all my kiddos at home, so he told me to take it as easy as I could.  I did try to stay down quite a bit, but ya it's hard to do that with school, dance, wrestling and a 1 year old!  I did the best I could though, and was glad that he never ended up actually putting me on bed rest!

My dad retired the end of January, the first Friday in February his work had a retirement dinner for him.  Ben was on call so we had to make a quick trip of it!  We drove to Kanab as soon as he got off work then drove home shortly after the dinner.  Unfortunately for us the dinner was for adults only, its been so long since I lived in Kanab that the only people I really know and would feel okay with watching our kids were at the dinner.  And since I have a hard time staying awake driving and its been even worse with this pregnancy, Ben basically was my chauffeur.  I sure love this man of mine!!  He drove us over and then stayed at my parents house with our kids (and later joined by Derrick's kids as well) all so that I could be at my dads retirement dinner!  We were able to order a plate of the food to go though!  So at least he did still get some prime rib and spare ribs!  Definitely his kind of meal, but definitely better fresh!

Brandi had had the idea to make a book for dad for Christmas that had a page for all the grandkids with ways they were following in grandpa's footprints with each of their footprints and pictures of them doing that thing.  It didn't end up happening for Christmas so we ended up doing it for a retirement gift instead!  The pages all turned out so cute!

Timber likes to eat nuts like grandpa, we had to settle for pecans since we didn't have any pine nuts!

Aspen likes to make pies like grandpa!

Hunter likes that grandpa worked with water like his dad does. 

As we were putting all the pages into the book Kira got, we were pleasantly surprised by two extra pages!  Tiffini and Jaylene both had a page to announce that they were pregnant!  I hadn't even thought to do a page for our soon to be born baby!  Theirs were cute, one said they would like to sleep a lot like grandpa and the other would be bald like grandpa, haha!  Unfortunately shortly after this Jaylene had a miscarriage :(

Dad opening his retirement presents at dinner.  Definitely needed some adult diapers, haha!!  You could tell it was a bitter sweet night for him!  He sure put his heart and soul into his work and he loved it!  He has had several calls since he retired from people wanting to know about projects or to report water leaks to him, etc.  I'm curious to see how long it will take for those calls to stop, he is well known in Kanab!  Him and Al have been going on walks together and quite a few hikes as well since he has retired!

At grandpa Turner's birthday party in January one of the family members had made a whole bunch of beanies and they let all the grandkids pick one.  Aspen chose a blue and green one, Hunter got a gray one, both of theirs were out of regular yarn.  Timber chose this cute pink one that was made out of fuzzy yarn!  She had a different one at one point but when she saw this one she had to have it!  I thought it was funny that it matched her coat and pants outfit perfectly!

Our nightly scriptures are almost always read by Ben!  Its quite often a race to get the best seat!  Timber has to sit on his lap, but won't ever hold still for long there, it quite often makes it hard for him to read because of it!  She usually ends up on my lap sometime during scriptures, dads lap isn't enough, she has to have both of our laps!

Hunter had a field trip to the children's museum.  I have gone on all of his other field trips, but was really not feeling it this time.  I did talk to his teachers and offered to go if they needed more parents, but when they said they had enough I was a little relieved.  I absolutely love helping in any way with my kids and school, but the end of this pregnancy has really gotten to me!  Numb hands quite often, really tired, and if I stand for very long my back would start to really hurt!  Even doing the dishes I would end up leaning on the counter after only a couple minutes because it hurt so much to stand there!  So walking around the children's museum really didn't sound like a great idea for me to attempt.  Hunter was a little nervous that I wasn't going to be there with him, but when he got home he said he had so much fun!  They even got to eat lunch at a park, which he thought was awesome!  And anytime we drive past that park (near the temple) he excitedly tells us all about it!

"Doing" her hair while I was getting ready.

Ben still ended up going to Salt Lake for the hunt expo this year.  I of course was hoping he wouldn't end up going, bath time was another thing that really hurt my back.  Several people in both of our families were very surprised he would leave me when I was that close to my due date, but I've never gone on my own and was only dilated to a 1 at my doc appointment the day before he left, so I wasn't really nervous about going into labor.  It is over our anniversary weekend (wish we would have known about the expo before we got married, it's messed up our anniversary several years now) so we just went to dinner and a movie during the week, my mom watched the kiddos for us.

She found this ladybug among the toys one day and loved it!!  I thought it was so funny that she loved it so much because we got it for Aspen when she turned 1 because she loved it so much in the store!  It sings a happy napper song that both our 1 year old girls can't get enough of!!

She danced around with it for a LONG time!  Especially for a 1 year old!

Sibling snuggles??  Haha wish I could remember what they were doing in these!!

I was very surprised at how long these 3 played ring around the Rosie's together!  I did have to keep reminding Hunter that Timber couldn't be whipped around!  He is 7 after all and lasted a lot longer than I would have thought he would!

I love her scrunched up nose!!!

She pulls some good faces when she is sniffing things!!  She's so funny and always wants to smell everything!  I even let her taste the vanilla this time!  For some reason that is so entertaining to me!  Aspen always asks if that's the stuff the smells good but tastes gross, haha!!

This girl amazes me how messy she can get!  We went to a park that had rubber pieces instead of wood chips and she must have kept rubbing her face after touching the rubber pieces haha!

She loves her babies!!  I think she was smelling her.

Theirs that scrunchy nose again!  She can smell her Clementine :)

That's my girl!!  Totally the position I like to color in, haha!!  Many people in my life have told me that I'm weird for laying on my stomach to color!

Hunter got to go to his friend Karston's birthday party the Saturday before we had baby.  It was a Pokemon themed party, he had a blast at it!  These 2 boys have become quite the Pokemon buddies!!

Tooth number 8!  He gets teased all the time about having no teeth!!  It's almost been a year since one of his top front teeth came out!  At his last dentist appointment the dentist told us that if it hadn't broken through by the time he comes in in May that they would probably need to help it come out by cutting it open with a laser.  He pulled it out sooner than it needed to come out so the gums had hardened pretty good over that spot.  As it started to come out his gums got pretty swollen but it did eventually break through on it's own!

I don't think I ever posted about Timber coming to one of my doctor appointments with me in January.  I had to schedule it for the afternoon and since it was still the really quick appointments I set it for while Aspen was at school and just brought Timber with.  It totally stressed her out when the doctor measured my belly!  I had given her my phone so she could look at pictures and thought it would distract her, but the second he got near me she got panicked and came quickly to my side!  I was laying there with my belly hanging out so the nurse picked her up and set her on the table next to me.  She asked me if it was owie!  I think her last shots must have traumatized her!  They were the end of October and this happened the beginning of January, so I was very surprised that she would have remembered them, but with how she was acting I really think she was worried about that!  Poor girl, I didn't think she would have a problem having me on the table, and since it was a completely different doctors office, I never would have guessed that she would be nervous!  Getting my urine sample was pretty funny with her in there!  She was quite the commentator!  She also didn't like it when they checked my blood pressure and was trying to climb on me while they took it, I think the noise of it made her nervous.  I was trying my best to stay calm so that hopefully my blood pressure wouldn't be high, her climbing on me made it tricky to try to keep calm, haha!

At my doctor appointment on the February 10th my blood pressure was high so they wanted me to stay and do a stress test and get an ultrasound.  My appointment was at 10:30 but they had been running late so by the time they got me done it was almost noon.  So they at first asked if I could come back at 4.  I was thinking things through out loud and mentioning when kids get out of school and hopefully my husband would be able to get off work early to watch the kids and hoping that I could get back over in time, etc, in my talking out loud they realized that I don't live close so the up front girl went and talked with the ultrasound tech and the nurse that does the stress test and they were both willing to work me in doing the lunch break so I didn't have to drive back and forth so much.  So glad they did!  The ultrasound looked good, it was a pretty quick one just making sure everything was still looking good.  Then the stress test went great!  They just put monitors on you to monitor contractions and babies movements and you have to click a button every time you feel baby move, and then they let you sit there doing the for about 20 min.  Baby is quite the mover, so she let me quit a few minutes early since baby was moving tons!  I've said it many times that I think this baby is going to be wild cuz it's already wild in my tummy!!  I even had a few contractions while doing the stress test, just tiny ones though, but I was sure hoping they were doing something!  Thank goodness for Brandi, she had my girls and took Aspen to school for me since I had to stay so much longer at the doctor's office!  My doctor decided that since I was so close to the end and the blood pressure was going up so much (like it has with all my pregnancies) he wanted me to do the ultrasound and stress test with all of my next appointments.  I had set up all my future appointments over a month before when I started the 2 week appointments, so the front desk girl was trying to help me by making the stress test and ultrasound appointments around the times I already had my doc appointment times.  It ended up being a nightmare!  She hadn't really said much to me except really that it was hard trying to make it work but she was trying the best she could to get the appointments all figured out around those times, well then the lady that normally does the appointment scheduling came back from lunch and took over so that that girl could go to lunch.  This lady was not very nice about it.  She got upset at me for how the other girl had been setting the appointments, normally they want the ultrasound, then stress test, then doc appointment and the girl had put the ultrasound and stress test after some of the doc appointments so that we could keep the doc appointment, so the scheduling lady basically chewed me out wondering why I was trying to do it that way.  Then started telling me that we would probably need to move the appointments to the afternoon on one of them, which I proceeded to explain that I couldn't really do that because my daughter has school in the afternoons and it's only for 2 hours so not enough time to drop her off, get over to their office have all the testing and get back to get her.  She just said well I just don't see how else I can make it work, it went on for a while before she finally got it worked out for the mornings, not quite in the order she wanted it to be but at least the doc appointments were last in the days line up after she changed the time on some of those.  She had also tried to put me early in the morning too, which she wasn't too happy when I had to tell her I couldn't do that because I had to get my son on the bus and wouldn't be able to get over there that early.  I was already stressed out about having to do all the extra testing each time and knowing that because of that there was a very good possibility that I was going to have to be started again, and just hoping that I would get to carry baby full term and hoping for no bed rest also.  Then throw some pregnancy emotions in the mix, yep there were tears.  And when I cry I get embarrassed, me which just makes me cry more.  Awesome.  I had told her that we probably didn't need to make and appointment any further than my appointment because I had always had to be started but she made one anyways, just in case.

My next appointment on the 17th, I still had high blood pressure but the stress test and ultrasound both went well again.  After the doctor got done checking me he turned to me and told me that in the OB world they don't recommend going past 39 weeks with high blood pressure, so he could start me the next Tuesday if that was OK with me.  Those were the words I had dreaded.  We were pretty sure this was our last baby and I just really wanted to go into labor on my own.  I felt like if I could deal with a good chunk of the labor at my house before going to the hospital then I would be able to go without the epidural, so I really really wanted that.  I felt very defeated.  Tears came again.  I explained why, but understood that we need to do what was best for baby so agreed to get started.  Well the next Tuesday was Jaron's birthday so I figured he would want his own birthday so said to not do Tuesday.  My doc said he could do Monday but that he's in surgery so it's easier on him to not induce on Monday's.  Well I didn't want to be induced anyways so I said to go for Wednesday.  They have to call to the hospital and make sure they can schedule it for that day then they have to have you sign papers, so they sent me back out to the waiting room while the head nurse did that.  I called and talked to Ben about it while I was waiting, and I'm pretty sure he was excited to be getting it scheduled.  It's definitely easier on him to have it scheduled so he can let work know for sure.  When I told him that I had told them to do the 24th instead of the 23rd so that Jaron would have his day, he told me that he had the same birthday as his aunt and thought it was so cool growing up.  So we talked for a minute then decided to switch it back to the 23rd if they would let us.  We had also talked about Ben taking several days off after we had this baby, he hasn't done that with the others, but because we had 2 in school and dance and wrestling going on this time we thought it would be better if he did.  So with going one day earlier that's one more day he's home with me!  When the lady called me back to sign the papers she had us all set to go in on the 24th, but when I explained about the dates changing, she just had me sign the papers then called the office to see if she could change the date and told me she would call to let me know the date for sure.  About an hour later I got the call that we were set to have our baby on the 23rd!

Back to the lady that scheduled my appointments, when I told her that the last 2 she had scheduled needed to be cancelled, she made a comment about me getting all worked up about them and then having to cancel them!  Ya lady, if you had been nicer to me about it I wouldn't have gotten as emotional about it, seriously I had just had a bunch of extra tests done to make sure my baby was OK, don't you think I would be a bit worked up!!  I'm sure most people would be!  Sometimes I really wonder why some people work in a costumer service type place!  Since I have worked with patients for several years and have made my share of mistakes and dealt with plenty of upset patients, I'm usually pretty understanding with just about anything, but she really bothered me.

My family was all very excited and for the next week kept randomly sending texts saying they were so excited and couldn't wait to meet our baby and see what we were having... I had a hard time responding.  I was not happy at all.  I was still feeling so defeated, even heading to the hospital, still defeat.  And on top of that I felt like we were taking Timber's babyhood away.  I felt horrible that she hadn't even gotten to be the baby for 2 years.  She still wanted to be carried or in my lap all the time, which I still did carry her up until I had baby!  Any time she would do anything baby-ish like fall asleep on my chest for example, I would call are text Ben and tell him that she was still a baby!  He kept trying to convince me that she wasn't a baby and that she was going to be fine, but it didn't work.  Don't get me wrong I was excited to see our baby and really excited to know what we were having (this is the only one that waiting to find out was hard for me) but I just wasn't ready yet.  In fact I hadn't gotten anything ready until a couple days before we had baby.  We had bought a couple boxes of diapers but that was it, I hadn't washed any clothes, blankets, the crib, nothing.  I hadn't bought an outfit for baby either.  When we had Timber I had bought a boy and a girl outfit, so I brought the boy one and figured I would send Ben to the store for a girl one if we had a girl.  When I finally did wash clothes I only washed the boy clothes, there were a lot of yellow clothes in the boy clothes so I figured even if we had a girl she could wear those clothes for a couple days until I washed the girl ones.  I found a nightmare when I finally brought the boy clothes boxes up though!  Remember my post about mice in our house??  Ya, they had gotten into the baby clothes.  I washed them in hot with vinegar to kill the germs, then washed them 2 more times with soap!  I didn't tell Ben, he told me to just wash them normal and they'd be fine.  I sat there and googled things, and most of the things I googled said the same thing Ben said.  But it was mouse poop all over newborn baby clothes!! Yuck!  I had to make S.U.R.E. it was clean!  That's all I really got done until the night before we were going to have baby.  We got the kids all ready for bed and right before bed time took them over to my parents house so they could spend the night there in case we got our phone call at 6 in the morning like we had with Hunter and Aspen.  

Poor Aspen had been sick on Sunday and didn't have school Monday or Tuesday because of S.E.P.'s.  Monday morning (the day before having baby) I took her to her S.E.P. and she seemed like she was doing pretty good, until part way into the S.E.P. I could tell she still didn't feel very good.  After her S.E.P. we went back home and just let her rest.  I can't remember for sure when this happened but sometime during her being sick she woke up and was hysterical!  She kind of wandered in the hall between her room and bathroom for a second, and when I asked her what she was doing, she was crying and saying that her tummy hurt.  I asked her if she maybe just needed to go to the bathroom, she told me no.  I told her to maybe go try, the second she stepped into the bathroom she peed.  She stood there crying hysterically and it was like our bathroom had flooded.  It is our small half bathroom, but still, it was a lot of pee!  Just the thing I wanted to clean up and deal with the day before I was going to have a baby, and with my huge prego belly!  It really was one of the craziest things I have seen, it was like she was delirious and didn't know what was going on, it really kind of scared me for her!  It also made me really nervous to go have a baby and be bringing a newborn home when Aspen was so sick!  And to leave Aspen with someone else when she was feeling so yucky was just one more thing to add to my not being excited.  My mom assured me that Aspen would be OK and that they would keep lots of Gatorade in her, and would keep us posted if she got any worse.  My moms assurances helped me feel a little better about leaving her.  We left the kids with a very detailed list of what activities happened on what day, and what times they got out of school, etc.  I think my parents thought I was crazy, haha!  Looking back at the list now (for some reason it's still hanging on their fridge), ya, I was a bit crazy!!

Once we got home from dropping the kids off at my parents we packed our bags for the hospital, then Ben got in bed.  I lost it.  I had a huge list of everything that I felt needed to be done before we brought a baby home from the hospital and he had just gotten in bed.  He explained that he felt like we should be getting as much sleep as we could before we would have a newborn keeping us up at night.  I agreed with him, so told him that's why he should help me so it could get done faster!  It was a rough night with not good feelings between both of us.  He thought me list was dumb (he didn't say so, but I could tell) and I felt it HAD to be done.  So we spent the night vacuuming the ceiling fan in our room so that no dust would fall on baby if we turned it on.  Pulled the crib away from the wall (we never took it out of our room after Timber, or Aspen if I'm being honest) and vacuumed really well, especially along the edges.  When I had gotten some of the baby blankets out of the crib drawers to wash when I was washing the baby clothes I found a few pieces of mouse poop.  Seriously where did they not go?!  And how did we never hear or see them anywhere but the kitchen!?  I sure hope that the silicone-ing I made Ben do keeps them out from here on out, it really grosses me out bad!!  So while Ben vacuumed I used disinfectant wipes over the entire service of the crib, and I mean ENTIRE service, every single rung, the mattress, the shelf, and all 3 drawers, even the mobile.  It seems like there may have been a few other things that I had Ben help me do that night but I can't remember now, maybe dishes, and cleaning the bathrooms??  I don't know.  I just remember the feelings of negativity radiating through our house that night.  And the feeling of not being ready (my own fault for waiting until the night before.)  It was pretty late by the time we finally got to bed, Ben still got in bed a bit before me once he was done with anything he could help me do.  The late night and nervousness didn't make for a very good nights sleep, but luckily the negativity between Ben and I was mostly gone by morning!

Our last family picture as a family of 5!  We took this the night before going to the hospital to have our baby!!

January 2016

So during Christmas Cason and Jaron both had their dogs in the Ewell's house, Hunter loves them!  I do not.  I don't mind dogs, just not in the house leaving their hair everywhere and rubbing up against my legs while I'm eating, and I already sneeze several times a day because of allergies, so with a dog in the house I would just be miserable.  Thankfully Ben is also not a lover of inside pets, he would like a dog but definitely wants it outside, and our yard isn't ready for a dog yet, we would want it fenced in so the dog could be back there without being chained up the whole time and no worry about it running off or going and leaving bombs on neighbor yards (even though we get bombs all the time in our front yard.)  Those two brothers, especially Cason were trying to convince us that we should get a dog, but once we told them that it wouldn't ever be allowed inside, then Jaron changed his mind and said we should never get a dog!  It was a pretty funny conversation.

So I sent Cason this picture a couple weeks later and told him this was my kind of dog!  I definitely think she's one of the cutest dogs I've ever seen!  She got this towel for Christmas. 

These are Timbers "dancing" lips!  She was requesting each of us to do the lips and dance to the music!  I think she was a born dancer!!

So since we were soon to become a family of 6 and both our car and truck only seat 5, we have been trying to sell our car for a few months now.  The problem has been that the car is so common they are pretty easy to find and there are quite a few people selling them for less than what we owe on ours!  Granted ours did have less miles, but it still doesn't look as appealing to people.  We had a few people come and look at it, but nobody would offer us anything we could do.  Since we were trying to sell it we were trying to keep it pretty nice, well I went to the store one afternoon after dropping Aspen off at school and as I'm checking out I heard my car alarm go off.  I didn't think anything of it, it does that randomly so I just clicked my button to make it stop and finished checking out.  Right as I was getting done a lady walked in and asked the cashier if she could help find out whose car that was.  I said that it was mine and sorry it's alarm randomly goes off, nothing to worry about.  Then she tells me that it was going off because she had hit it.  Not what you want to hear of the vehicle you are trying to sell.  I went out there with her and it had a nice long scratch along one half of the bumper, I took her insurance info and she left.  I've decided that car was a target in parking lots!  We got backed into when I was in Headstart dropping Hunter off at preschool, it was a truck and the hitch went into the license plate.  We decided not to have it fixed that first time since Ben was able to just bang the license plate flat and it completely covered the dent.  Then another time I was at the church and a lady in my ward came in, again I thought she was just letting me know the alarm went off, then told me she made it mad.  I still didn't get it, I thought she must have bumped it as she walked past or something.  Well she had backed up into it and made a dent in it.  At the time we weren't trying to sell it and it wasn't super bad so we didn't want to raise their rates on insurance or anything, so we again decided not to get it fixed.  Well since we were trying to get it fixed and this scratch was a lot more noticeable than the others we ended up deciding to get it fixed. When I took it in I made sure to explain that the scratch was from the accident, well the scratch was so bad that they just had to do a new bumper, which ended up fixing the other 2 dents as well!  I'm weird and felt bad using the ladies insurance and getting it fixed, but it's a lot harder to sell if it looks damaged!

We ended up selling Ben's truck before the car and a couple weeks before baby arrived we bought a Sequoia.  Ben had been searching for one and found a few that he wanted to look at up north.  I was looking on Facebook one day, the day after the truck sold to be exact, and there happened to be a Sequoia for sale in Toquerville, it was the right price with decent miles and had been well taken care of by it's one and only owners.  We ended up being able to borrow money from Ben's brother and dad, plus the money from our truck and were able to buy it the next day.  Then a week later when we got our taxes back we were able to pay his brother and dad back.  It worked out great!  We got the vehicle we wanted for the price we wanted it for and had enough money to make it ours free and clear!  It still took a few months to sell the car after that though.

Showing off her freckle finger and learning to tell you she's one all at the same time!

We had a little bit of snow, I think this was the most we got this year!  Hunter was gone to school but he said he got to play in it some there.  I was worried it would melt before They got dressed and ready for the day and didn't really want to get them dressed to get all wet then have to come in and change clothes, so they are in their jammies haha!  Aspen had dress jammies on so I did have her put a pair of pants on at least.

Throwing a snowball!

Aspen showing Timber how to make a snowball.

So I ended up having problems with my hands going numb during this pregnancy again.  That's what resulted in me getting my surgery for my swollen lymph node after I had Timber.  My hands had been going numb then and Derrick thought it was a possibility that the lump was probably not helping in that matter.  I was pretty bummed when it started happening with this pregnancy.  I went and saw Derrick about it to see if there was anything he could do to help.  He showed me some exercises to help open up my shoulders and help with circulation, they helped somewhat but not enough.  The day after I saw Derrick I had my regular baby doctor visit, so I also asked him if it was normal.  He said yes that can happen in pregnancy and it should go away shortly after I have the baby, and until then things like typing and small repetitive motions with the hands can cause it to be worse.... Ya typing is one of my jobs, the other is filing peoples nails, which is a small repetitive motion.  Awesome.  I didn't stop doing work or nails, although I did slow down on my job and made sure all my nail clients chose pretty simple designs after that.  With this pregnancy it was worse than with Timbers.  It would not only go numb and tingly, but would shoot pain up my arm!  So I would have to pretty often stop and shake my hands out for both jobs.  Luckily I only do a few friends nails, so they were very understanding and I didn't have to worry about that too often.  I did end up getting even further behind in my billing work because of it though.
Funny story about my appointment with Derrick, he had a new receptionist, after she checked me in (I came a little early after lunch so Derrick wasn't back yet) we chatted.  Well the fact that I was pregnant came into the conversation, then she asked if I was due about the same time as Tiffini, then she looked at my belly and said oh never mind she's not as far as you huh, isn't she like  10 weeks or so?  Haha, I had no clue that Tiffini was even pregnant!  And I also wasn't sure if they wanted people to know yet, so I didn't say anything to Derrick, but it was a pretty funny way to find out!!  A few weeks after that at my dad's retirement party they "announced" that they were pregnant, so I didn't have long to wait for them to tell us.

Trying out sisters gloves and moms slippers!

The kids new church clothes that they got from Grandma Lisa for Christmas.  All the Granddaughters got matching dresses, the two littlest Timber and Harper had matching together, we couldn't find their sizes in the older girls dresses.  And all the Grandsons got new church shirts.

None of the pictures from Tyler and Kerri's wedding showed my outfit very well and since I sent a whole bunch of picture texts of just about everything that fit theirs colors that I owned to Brandi and she helped me piece together what I should wear, I figured the next time I wore it all together again I should probably send her a picture so that she knew our afternoon of texted ended up coming together!  Also Talee had been having a hard time wearing her Christmas dress from grandma (she doesn't like dresses) so I thought it wouldn't hurt to send a picture of Aspen in hers, hoping that might help her want to wear it.

Timber taking pictures :)

A selfie with daddy!

The 4th weekend was Ben's Grandpa Turner's 80th birthday.  The family was throwing a party for him but since I would be 2 days shy of 35 weeks for it and I was also in charge of sharing time that month I wasn't planning on going.  Ben was going to go up with his parents and the kids and I would just stay home.  Joslyn and Tyson were going out of town and had asked Dwayne and Dixie to watch Tayten and Aspen (their Aspen) for them.  With them having those 2 to take up to the birthday party that left 1 spot in the car for Ben.  Well on Friday when Jeremy was picking up the boys from Joslyn Lucas did not want to go with his dad!  He really wanted to get to go with Grandma and Grandpa with Tayten and Aspen.  Well since he was now going that took the seat that Ben was going to be in, so Ben said that he would just drive and could take the kids up with him.  We ended up talking and decided we would just make sure we would be back on Sunday for me to still do my sharing time and we would all go up.  I'm glad we did!  We had a good time!  The first night we got up there was stayed at Kira's house, we got there pretty late but lucked out and Harper woke up so I got to snuggle her for a few minutes before she went back to bed.  Then us adults played games for a little bit before heading off to bed.  Kira and Jordan had stuff going on the next day about the same time we had wanted to get up and doing stuff so it worked out great!  We decided to make this the last fun hoo-rah before baby came.  We searched for deals for the zoo, the aquarium and a few other places but couldn't ever find anything, so instead we went to Scheels. Haha!  The kids seemed to enjoy it though!

Timber watching them on the ferris wheel.

Hunter and Aspen definitely liked their ride!

And they had a fish tank that you can walk under that the kids thought was awesome!

Then we headed over to Cabela's, we are hard pressed to go up north without a stop in at Cabela's.

Timber thinks she's helping push the cart, she loves to help!  "Me do it!" is a very common phrase from her!  I can't remember if I have posted about how she says Hunter and Aspen or not, so in case I haven't here it is!  When she first started saying their names they were both "Ah," then when she realized we were getting confused of which one she was talking about Hunter became "Oh."  I loved it!  Ben would try to correct it, but I thought it was so cute!  And "Oh" is pretty random, "Ah" is at least the start of Aspen's name!  Then around this time she started to call Aspen "Apens" but Hunter was still "Oh!"  Shortly after this though she did figure out how to say both their names right, although sometimes she would call Hunter "Oh" still but we could ask her to say "Hunter" and she could totally say it, I guess so long of calling him "Oh" took a while to break the habit!
After Cabela's we headed to an arcade where we played until it was time to go over to the church for the birthday party.  I didn't get any pictures of them at the arcade, but they had a blast!  The prizes the chose cracked me up!  Hunter chose 4 skeleton guys, they were all pretty much the same thing.  And Aspen chose all candy!  Timber also got candy!  As we left the arcade it was pouring rain!  We just hoped it would let up before the end of the party!

They had a dinner, pictures, and Grandpa played his guitar for everyone, with Jenny singing.  I had no clue that Grandpa played the guitar until that day!  Apparently he was in a band when he was younger!  Our kids were funny for the pictures, Timber had only had like a 10 minute nap in the car so she was really tired and Aspen and Hunter were being a bit shy.  The only kids they really knew there were Joslyn's.  Hunter and Apsen for some reason wouldn't take their coats off and Hunter kept just staring with a "duh" look on his face.  Timber wouldn't smile either but she sat there so well!  I was surprised, especially since she didn't know the cousins lap she was sitting in!  They did a picture with just the great grandkids first, they took several trying to get all the kids looking at them and mostly smiling.  Then they added in the grandkids (above.)

And finally all their kids as well.  Do you love how my baby belly is right in between Grandma and Grandpa Turner's heads!!  I don't think I would have placed the pregnant lady there if I had been the one taking the pictures haha!!  I was very glad we ended up going, we were the only ones there out of Dixie's 6 kids!  4 of them were up at a cabin for Moxie, Cason, Jaron, Tyler and Joslyn.  That's the pest control company they were all signed on to go sell for that summer.  Tyson didn't end up going, and the other 3 have sold for them for the past several years.  And Gavin wasn't able to come.  Besides our family all but 1 of the other grandkids were there.  There are only 12 grandkids total, Dixie had half of them!  So it would have been a bummer if at least one of them hadn't been there!  These pictures were on Dixie's Facebook page and someone that new the family was trying to guess who everyone was, they guessed that I was Dixie's daughter!  I thought it was funny, Ben was just ignored in the guessing, the one that is blood related haha!

After the party was over we drove down to Codie and Rachels house to stay the night, the live in Nephi canyon so it was much closer than going back up to Kira's.  It was snowing when we came out of the party and continued to snow the whole way to their house.  We called Codie on our way to see how it looked at his house, we were debating whether to just stay and Grandma and Grandpas house and hope the storm passed by morning.  Codie said it was fine there so we continued on, it was coming down pretty good the whole way, but nothing compared to what it was doing in the morning!  I text my counselor to see if she could read over the sharing time lesson for in case we didn't make it back because of the snow.  In the morning we kept waiting hoping it would slow down, finally at the latest we felt we could wait in hopes to still make it back in time for church we decided to just start driving and see what happened.  Through there town it wasn't bad at all, seconds outside of their town the roads were pretty bad, so bad that we didn't even know where we could turn around to go back, so we continued down the canyon.  I get really anxious and nervous driving in the snow so it was a horrible trip for me.  Shortly after we got back on the freeway though it cleared up and wasn't a problem.  There were 2 other times during the drive home that we hit some good snow storms but for the most part it wasn't too bad.  We did get home too late to shower and make it to sacrament meeting, so we ended up just going to the 2nd two hours of church.  We made it back for me to do my sharing time!

New accidental hairdo that turned out super cute!  I had just meant to have the braids come together in the back, but it looked kind of crazy and I didn't want to start over so I started messing with it and this just kind of happened, haha!

Timber-loo learned a new word, bracelet!  Just like her sister anything that can go on her wrist magically becomes a bracelet!

When we just had Hunter and Aspen I decided to make the kids their own kid sized aprons, they both were always wearing my 2 aprons so then I never got go wear one.   I got the pattern and the fabric, got it all cut out, then I started reading the pattern to start sewing... I couldn't understand what it was trying go tell me!  It was like a !!fortune!! Language!  Basting??  I thought you baste food!  Even with a bit of googling I couldn't quite decide what I was supposed to do, even though I know understand the non-cooking term of basting.  I've never sewed from a pattern before as I'm sure you can tell.  So the cut out ready to sew material got set aside.  A year or two later I started doing a girls nails that after a few sets and getting to know her and feel like friends with her, I came to know that she loves to sew and pretty well always has a project.  So one time after getting done with her nails, by this time Timber was a baby, I showed her the pattern and she explained it to me.  Well as I said Timber was a baby which did not leave my hands free for much sewing, so again the cut ready to sew, and newly acquired knowledge of how to sew sat being forgotten.  Then one time in December I got the urge to finish them!  Originally I was hoping for some Christmas presents, but seeing how this is the end of a January post, that didn't happen.  But I did get this one done!  I came to one other stand still spot not knowing what it was talking about and the next time my mom came over she helped me to understand.  Right when I got it don't Timber happened to wander in the kitchen so I tried it on her... Well it had been intended for Aspen since the material was bought before Timber was even in the works, but since I tried it on Timber she thought it was hers.  So I asked Aspen if she wanted that one since it was supposed to be hers, or if she would like to pick out a different material for me to make her one out of.  She decided a new material and chose a blue "Frozen" one.  Now I bet you are guessing that I got right on the other two since I now knew how to do it right?  Well, with my numb hands and the soon to arrive baby, Hunter and Aspen's material got set aside and forgotten again.