Myah's first "Real" photo shoot!

If you live by me and need pictures taken, check out courtneymckayphotography.blogspot.com. She did a great job!

The First Week of May

The first week of May was an interesting one at our house! On May 1st, this is what we woke up to!!!!! I am so tired of snow I could scream! The kids don't hardly know what to think. One day it is about 70 and the next day this...... My tulips still looked bright and happy giving me hope that spring really is here to stay. We have had a couple of good rain storms since that day, but no more snow....hopefully it is gone for good (at least until next winter). Somebody needs to give Mother Nature the memo! (I guess I have to say I am grateful for the moisture, hopefully we won't have to worry about a drought this summer!)
Then our poor little Camden got SOOO sick. I hate seeing my kids sick, it just breaks my heart. Camden hasn't really been sick at all this winter, which I am grateful for, but hated that once he did get sick we had a newborn baby aughhhhh. Luckily no one else got sick. He had a temperature of 104.6. My kids fever high, but never that high. We took him to the doctor and he was pretty sure it was strep. He sent us home with a prescription and sent the test in. Camden has been named the worlds WORST medicine taker. Even with his temp so high he absolutely refused to take ANYTHING! Not even a grape flavored children's Tylenol (I thought those tasted pretty good). And to think he was going to take his Amoxicillan was a completely other story! We tried sneaking it in everything.....no luck. We finally snuck some Motrin in a jelly sandwich and that ended up being our trick to help get his fever down, but we never did get him to take his prescription. On Mon. I was ready to take him back to the doctor to get a shot of antibiotics (figured it would be much less painful than fighting him twice a day for 10 days), when the doctor's office called and said his strep test came back negative. I was happy to not have to worry about giving him the medicine....or a shot, but hated that it meant there was nothing I really could do to make him better. After 4 long days he finally returned back to normal. Hopefully we can keep the sick bug away for a LONG time!

My little sister Ashley just got the cutest little toy poodle you have ever seen! His name is Bentley. He is only going to gain two more pounds. Anyway we babysat him one afternoon while she was at work, and Carter was in puppy HEAVEN! He carried that little thing around all afternoon. He wouldn't leave his side for anything. I was really worried he might hurt the poor thing, but luckily he survived! If I was an inside dog person I might consider having one, but in the mean time I will just have to let Carter play with this little guy!

Well by the end of the week, the sun was shining, the weather beautiful and I even got a sunburn working in the yard. I am itching to get my flowers planted, but have to get the weeds out first! So here is the first flower of the spring......it's pretty cute if you ask me!

Reflections of Christ

I just got this email and it is an amazing slide show of pictures of the Savior set to a beautiful version of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". I tried to download the video to my blog but it wouldn't work so you will have to just click on the link. It might be worth a few minutes of your time. Enjoy! (p.s. thanks Carrie!) (p.p.s. you'll want to push pause on my music so you can hear.)

> > <http://mabrystudios.typepad.com/reflections_of_christ/2008/03/reflections-sli.html>

Welcome baby Saylor!

Darin's brother and his wife shocked us all the other day with a huge surprise! They adopted a little girl and none of us had any idea that she was coming! I think it was a pretty whirlwind situation and they just ended up knowing the right people at the right time! We are so excited to meet this little girl and so excited for Myah to have a little cousin to play with that is so close in age! Welcome to the family Saylor! What an amazing gift!

Myah is 4 weeks old!

Myah is already four weeks old! I can't believe how fast time has already gone by. It feels like you are pregnant FOREVER and then they get here and just grow so fast! I feel like 3 kids isn't as hard as I had heard, but I do feel like I have absolutely no time anymore. So I haven't done much blogging, hopefully I have made up for it tonight and feel like I am finally caught up. So even though life is crazy, Myah has just been so much fun. We all just love her! She has been a really good baby. She only wakes up once during the night (usually....now I said that she will wake up 3 times tonight). Other than occasional fussiness she really is quite happy an content. I just can't hardly remember what life was like without her and wouldn't trade her for the world. Here are a few more pictures of her....like I said I am a little camera happy!!!!

This girl hates waking up. She squirms and grunts for about 10 min. before she wakes up. But when she does wake up, I better be ready to feed her, because the girl likes her food RIGHT when she wakes up. If she doesn't get it be ready for a tantrum infant style. She cries so hard her little head turns as red as a cherry and she holds her breath until she has to suck in enough air to keep from passing out. It really is kind of cute.....I just need to remember that when she is 2 and the fits aren't quite as entertaining! Once she gets fed then she is her happy content self again. I think she must get this characteristic from her dad. He will be the first to admit that when he is hungry......he needs to be fed!!!
So sometimes when I am feeding her I get a little bored. She just happens to have a head full of hair and one day I just couldn't help myself. I made these little twisties all over her head. She looked pretty funny!
Here is a picture I edited using picnik.com. Thanks Hayley for sharing. I have had a lot of fun with it!
This picture I love....I think she looks full of sass!
Somewhat of a smile....I am sure there are much bigger ones to come!"OK mom, enough pictures already!"And last but not least....our little angel sleeping. Nothing is as precious as seeing her sleep!

Camden is playing soccer!

Camden has started his first year of soccer! I am sure it is the first of many more years to come. And even though the excitement I feel at having to run my child to and from activities is bound to get old soon, it has just been so much fun to watch him getting all grown up on me. He started practices last week and after the first day he looked at me and said "Mom, soccer sure is a lot of hard work". But ever since then he has been so excited about it. He had his first game on Wed. and he was such a trooper. He was running all over the place and occasionally he would fall down and look over at me and just stand up and start running again. It is quite comical to watch 5 year olds playing soccer. They are just like a herd of sheep all following the ball wherever it went. They all did well, other than the fact they got beat by about 14 pts. But the fact that they had fun was all that mattered. We have another game tomorrow and he can hardly wait. Hopefully they will understand that they need to kick the ball INTO the goal....but even if they don't I just hope he has a good time!

It was so funny to watch him. He constantly was raising his hand to say he wanted the ball....I guess preschool has taught him well that he needs to raise his hand when he wants something!


This is him and his little buddy Kaden that lives in our cul-de-sac. They have a lot of fun playing together!

And here he is with Carter and Kaden's brother Kyler and sister Kirsten. They all had a good time and it was like pulling teeth to get them in the car to come home. They wanted to play soccer all night!

Happy Birthday to Oh So Many!

So in Darin's family, there are quite a few April birthday's. So in honor of everyone, we all met at a park and had a birthday bash. I didn't get many pictures, but they had a pinata and I got a few of my boys batting away. They had a blast. Camden already has requested one for his birthday. Other than that we just ate some yummy food, did a lot of talking, had a birthday cake and all the kids and dads played ball. It was a fun outing...Myah's first...but she slept through it all! It is so much fun spending time with family. Next month I am sure we will have to do it again since there are about six more birthday's in May.

Looking back at Easter

So I am finally going to try and get caught up...Life has been kind of crazy if you can imagine. Anyway here our a few Easter pictures. We just kind of hung out at home this year. We had stake conference on Easter Sunday (kind of weird!) so we went to Darin's mom's ward and listened to her speak in sacrament meeting and then we came home and dyed eggs and had a little Easter egg hunt. Later in the afternoon we went out to my parents house for dinner. It was a beautiful day, which surprised me for how early in the year Easter fell this year. We were glad for sunshine. I was just a few days from having Myah so I was just trying to be a good sport and not think about how uncomfortable I was. Overall it was a fun day!

Yeah the Easter bunny came! Camden was pretty excited about all of the things left for him in his basket!

Carter was ecstatic!

Good morning....this is after the kids had already loaded up on a good portion of their treats. We did our best to control the sugar intake, but what the heck....it was Easter. I guess I must have been having a brain fart that day or the pregnancy had really got the best of me, because I totally spaced taking a picture of the boys in their Sunday attire. I did however catch a picture of Carter sporting a bunny hat Camden had made in preschool the Fri. before. They looked really cute...I guess I will have to dress them up again and take their picture again!
Here we are dying Easter eggs. It was fun, but I have to admit I am somewhat of a control freak, I find myself trying to help them more than they would like....I did my best to just let them make a mess.....Aughhhh!
Carter loved the stickers. He covered his little egg with his entire sheet of stickers. He was pretty proud of his work!
Camden loved the stickers as well. They got bored with the dye quickly-I don't think they wanted to wait that long!

As you can see, Darin was pretty proud with his work as well!And here are the final products! It was fun and Carter, who is the pickiest eater this planet has ever known, was so excited about it that when we came inside from our easter egg hunt ate an entire "Easter Egg" sandwhich (aka egg salad). We were all very impressed!I loved this picture of Camden holding Carter's hand as they started out looking for their eggs. It's fun to see that with all the fighting they do, they really love each other after all! Yeah for springtime and Easter! What a great holiday. It is such a great opportunity to think about the Savior and his atoning sacrifice he made for us so I can be with my cute little family forever! I sure love them all to pieces!

Look-a-Like

I was just thinking that the first picture of Myah sure looks a lot like Camden as a baby.....What do you think? It could just be a mom thing.

Myah's first photo shoot!

So I guess I am a little overboard with taking pictures of Myah, but I always am with a new baby---they are just too cute to not get on film. Anyway I would love to take her to get newborn pictures, but she is still so little and there is still so much flu going around so I decided to take a crack at the pictures myself. It was fun and she was a good sport!

More of Myah

Well I thought that I would write a little bit about the day Myah came. More for my personal record since this is somewhat my journal, so don't feel inclined to read. I was scheduled for an induction on Fri. I had been dialated to a 3 for two weeks and was having a lot of contractions. Just nothing serious. The week before I had her I had called my sister to come sleep over 3 times just incase I went into labor during the night---I was sure she was coming soon! On Wed. night I had contractions every 5 min. for three hours and finally called Labor and Delivery. They said that the contractions needed to be 2-3 min. apart before I could come in. Well the contractions continued about every 5-10 min. The next morning I called to make an appointment with my midwife just to see if anything was going on. They fit me in, in the afternoon and low and behold all of those contractions hadn't done anything. I was still a 3+ and 70% effaced. My midwife told me I might go into labor that night but she would just plan on seeing me in the morning for my induction (this is a key part to the story!). Well that night we took the kids to my moms and Darin and I went to the movie and out to dinner. The next morning I started calling the hospital at 7:30 a.m. My friend had been induced earlier in the week and had to wait all day so I was expecting the same. They told me it would be around noon. Well at 10:00 I called again and they said around 2:00. Well at 1:30 I called and they said "Great news, three women just delivered and we are ready for you." Yeah----I thought. Only to have them ask me who my doctor was. When I told them my midwife's name they said "Oh no, didn't they call you?" I was thinking---"oh great!". Well come to find out, my midwife could only deliver me in the morning because she was going out of town for the weekend. Since the hospital was to busy, she had to give me over to the doctor on call and he was too busy to induce me that day!!!! My midwife had never mentioned any of this to me, so I was frustrated to say the least! Anyway we ended up spending a childless afternoon together. The boys wanted to stay at my mom's house so I just had a day to sit and wait! Well the next morning it started all over again. By the time the hospital was ready for me it was around noon. They got me hooked up on Pit around 1:00 and the doctor broke my water around 2:00. I soon got my epidural and by 6:00 I was ready to push. The doctor was at home so we waited about a half of an hour for him to come and then 15 min. of pushing later, little Myah was born. Everything went well and the doctor that ended up being on call was the same doctor that delivered Camden so it wasn't that big of a deal. He is a really good doctor. Myah had the cord wrapped around her neck so I was glad that he knew what he was doing. I was really looking forward to delivering with a midwife---I've heard they are great, but maybe I will just stick with the doctor since I seem to end up with them anyway. We were able to come home on Mon. morning and life has been crazy ever since. Myah has such a sweet spirit though and I just look at her and I'm amazed that she just came from Heavenly Father. If only I knew what she knew inside of that tiny little head of hers. I always have thought it would be amazing if babies could talk---oh the things that they could tell us! The boys are loving her and constantly just want to sit by her side and watch her. The other day I asked Camden what he wanted to do and he just smiled and said "I think I will just watch Myah". As crazy as a new baby is, I am so thankful to have such a special little person at our home. I love all of my kids and am just so grateful to have them in my life!