Street Hockey

We bought Will a hockey stick a while ago but he hasn't had much opportunity to use it. Before the weather turned bad, Lance spent several evenings out in the street with Will playing hockey. 

Sometimes some of the neighbors would come out and join them, other times it was just them. Will had a blast and would want to stay outside as long as possible. Blake also liked to be outside with them, though usually she was an observer like me. It was a lot of fun to me to watch father and son spending quality time together and enjoying it so much. 

One neighbor has a small goal that they used a few times. Another time they turned a garbage can on it's side and used that. And other times they just hit and chased the ball around the circle. 

  

It's Been Awhile....

I promise I haven't completely forgotten or neglected this blog. My computer has been having some issues and I have been unable to use the internet for weeks. Doing a blog post from my phone was an option, but it would have taken much longer and not had as many pictures. So I decided to wait.

But now that means I have a ton of blog posts to catch up on. Hopefully I'll have most of them posted within the next few days! Stay tuned!

Casino Royale

Saturday night, Enterprise had a party for all of it's employees at the Marriott at City Creek downtown. It was a black-tie event and themed Casino Royale. Guys were encouraged to wear tuxedos and women were supposed to wear formal gowns. 

We dropped all three kids off at Cindy's and made our way downtown to the event. The room was full of tables and chairs, a small dance floor, and card tables. Buffet tables were scattered throughout the room with different types of food from prime rib, cheese sandwiches, little smokies, shrimp cocktail, mashed potato bar, etc. 

Everyone was given raffle tickets to put in a drawing of a gift basket of your choice. They were giving away ski tickets, a PS4, tickets to a jazz game, fitness package, a night stay at the Marriott, etc. Each person was also given 150 poker chips. You could buy more raffle tickets with your poker chips. One hundred poker chips could be exchanged for one raffle ticket. We played Black Jack for a little bit, though both Lance and I played a bit conservative and we walked away about even. 

There was also a fun little photo booth with a ton of dress-up props. 

I was running on only a few hours of sleep from the night before, so we didn't stay until the very end. It was fun to get out for a little while and be around other adults. It was my first time leaving Austin for a long period of time, so I was a little anxious, but she did great. Huge thanks to Cindy for making it possible for us to go. 

Austin's Newborn Photo Session

I originally thought that I would try to take Austin's newborn pictures myself. I feel like I'm getting better with my camera and I was excited to try it out. I figured the least I could do was try, and if I didn't like them, then I could pay someone else to take some. 

While we were in the delivery room, I got my camera out to take some pictures but it wouldn't turn on. I recently got a new battery, so I thought maybe it was the wrong battery or something. Lance ran it down to the battery store and they said it was fully charged and should be working. Suddenly my only camera was my phone, which wasn't quite what I was hoping to use for her pictures. 

I called around to a few photographers, but most of the decent ones were booked out several weeks/months. A friend of mine recommended Hanna Roberts Photography to me and luckily she had an opening a few days later. 

While we were there, I also had her take a few shots of Will and Blake.

I was in the other room feeding Austin while she took the kids' pictures. I could tell that Blake was being quite the pill and not cooperating. Big surprise there. She is the most difficult person to photograph. Either she is making crazy faces, has her hands covering her face, or is simply trying to run away. Getting her to hold still is nearly impossible. So I am happy she was able to at least get a decent shot of her.

 
I especially love this last one of her. Though I wish her hair would have been less out of control. It doesn't like to stay "done". 

And then for the really hard part. The kids couldn't wait to go play and were not excited to take more pictures. Blake refused to sit closer than a foot to Will. Likely this picture was captured right after I picked up Blake, set her down right next to Will and dashed away as quickly as I could. Seriously, it was a bit of a joke. I didn't want to waste more time trying to get an impossible picture, so we gave up and moved on to Austin and let the kids run wild.  

At home, this girl is hardly ever awake. And it almost takes work to keep her awake. But as usual, once you try to take pictures, you can't get them to go to sleep. We sat there and waited about 45 minutes for her to finally doze off. She wasn't thrilled with not having a blanket and would wake up every time we tried to take it off. 

 Probably my favorite picture of the whole group!

 I also really like this one. 

Thanks Hanna Roberts! I'm really happy with how they turned out. I love my kids so much, and I am grateful to have Austin in our lives.


Photo credit: Hanna Roberts Photography

Halloween 2015

"Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is." - Yoda

I have a love/hate relationship with Halloween. I am always really excited and want to come up with creative and awesome Halloween costumes. But then my mind goes blank, and I can't come up with anything. I scour pinterest, yet nothing seems to stand out to me. I knew Austin would be born shortly before Halloween, so I really wanted to get everyone's outfits ready before she came. Doing a Star Wars theme had crossed my mind, but I wasn't really thrilled with the idea. So I did nothing. Then Austin was born, and I still had no ideas for costumes. We have plenty of dress-ups, however, so I figured as a last resort they could just throw one of those on.

Will was supposed to dress-up for preschool the Wednesday before Halloween, and they were having a party and a little parade where the parents could come. On Monday, I suddenly felt ambitious and decided to go ahead with the Star Wars theme. Because Will's had to be finished by Wednesday, I started with his. 

Copying a link on Pinterest, I came up with this Jedi outfit. I bought some cheap khaki pants and made them into skinny jeans. Then I found a pattern for a vest and cloak. I love how the vest turned out, but the cloak is a different story. There were so many different patterns, and most were more complex than I really cared to try. I didn't have a lot of time to make it, so I wanted something simple. It gets the job done, but it was poorly made and doesn't look great up close.  

Once I had Will's made, I started on Austin's. Originally, I was just going to make the Yoda beanie for her and call it good, but then I decided to add a little tutu, and a vest-type thing as well. I think it really completed the look. I know it's probably pointless to dress a newborn baby up, yet it was fun ,and I think she looked absolutely adorable.

Cutest little Yoda I've ever seen.

And lastly I began to tackle Blake's outfit. I originally wanted to make her dress myself, but one day while I was in kid-to-kid, I noticed they had this Leia dress in her size. I didn't buy it then because I was still determined to make her dress. But some of the patterns for the dress that I was planning on using were very similar to the jedi cloak and I wasn't happy with how that turned out. Plus, by this point it was already Friday afternoon and I was quickly running out of time. I decided to run back to Kid-to-Kid and see if they still had the costume. Luckily, they did. It came with a different Leia hair piece that was quite hideous, so I made this hat for Blake to wear instead. 

I told the kids we couldn't go trick-or-treating until I took some pictures. They were not excited about it, but after enough threats they finally complied...somewhat.  

It was chilly and there was a bit of a breeze, so I tried to take the ones with Austin quickly. She was squirming and became fussy quickly. Fortunately, I got a couple of shots that worked. Afterwards, Lance took the kids trick-or-treating while Austin and I stayed home to pass out candy. 

"The force is strong in my family."

Happy Halloween!

Unexpected

I really had no idea how Will and Blake were going to react to having a new baby in the house. Will seemed to be pretty excited and was always talking about how he was going to help hold the baby and feed the baby. I'm not sure Blake really understood what was coming, but she just copied what Will said. I thought she would be pretty apathetic and all but ignore the baby.

So I was a bit surprised when both kids were pretty much obsessed with her. The night that we brought her home, the kids were bouncing off of the walls with excitement. They wanted to see her, hold her, tickle her, you name it. It was hard to get them to go to sleep.

The following day or two were more or less the same. They were so intrigued with her and wanted to be right next to her all of the time, especially Blake. When I put her in the swing, they would literally just sit on the floor and stare at her.

And they were both on super high alert. If Austin made the smallest noise, both kids were up, had a bottle/binky and were trying to force it in her mouth within seconds. Seriously, you could see them shaking from excitement, just waiting until she did something and they could help. It didn't take long for her to try and hide from her siblings.

As more time has passed, the excitement has worn down a little. They still love to help and fight over who gets to sit close to their sister, but they've gotten much better at leaving her alone. It is a lot of fun watching them interact with Austin and seeing how much they love her. If Austin makes a noise, Blake always runs to me to tell me that her baby sister is talking to her. Sometimes they can be a bit obnoxious and try to smother her a little too much, but it's sweet to see how much they care for her already. 

Austin's Birth Story

We arrived at the hospital right before midnight on Monday to be induced. We filled out some paperwork and were taken to our room. It was probably close to 1 am before they finally had us all situated and the pitocin going. I was dilated to about 2 cm at this point.

We got settled in and began the waiting game. I was comfortable and ready to go. The nurse mentioned that the doctor would be in between 6-8 am to break my water. That was a little disappointing, because I remember with Blake they broke it within the first hour or two.

During the night, I started feeling some contractions, though they still weren't super painful. When the pain started getting more uncomfortable, we did some medicine through my IV.

When my doctor came to break my water around 7:30 am, I was only dilated to around 3 cm. My doctor told me if I wanted to get an epidural, that it would be a good time cause the pain was likely to start picking up. So we called the anesthesiologist in. They sat me up in the bed and I was ready. As he was inserting the needle, he kept saying, "Let me know if you have any of these symptoms: ...dizziness, ringing in the ears, etc.". At first, everything was perfect and I kept saying that I was fine. Then suddenly, every single symptom he warned me about happened.  It was one of the most bizarre things I've ever had happen, especially the ringing in my ears. It was like everyone was talking to me, but I could only almost hear them, like background noise. Seriously, it was odd.

After a few minutes of adjusting, they got it figured out and I was good to go.

The next few hours passed by very uneventfully. Lance went home for a bit to check on the kids and get some food, and I pretty much just sat there. I had a book I read from here and there. I watched an episode or two on Netflix. I took a lot of short naps. Anything longer was impossible due to the blood pressure cuff constantly squeezing the guts out of my arm and nurses coming and going.

Throughout the day, I started to feel my epidural wear off my left leg. Around 1 pm (ish), my back was hurting bad enough that I asked to have the anesthesiologist come in and check it. He increased my dose a little bit and adjusted things to try to get that other side numb again.

The pain started getting better and I was relieved that it seemed to be working. But it didn't work for long. Within about an hour, my back was really starting to hurt again. The nurses checked me at this point, and hallelujah, I had progressed to 6 cm. It honestly felt like a miracle, yet still a ways to go. 

The nurse wanted to try moving me onto my side with my leg propped in the air to try to get the baby to move into the right position. I was SO uncomfortable at that point. Lying in that position only increased my back pain, and I asked for the anesthesiologist to come back in again. 

Almost right as he is coming into the room, I start to feel some pressure. Then we have to try to figure out what exactly we want to do. Basically, I was told he could give me another dose like before, or he could redo the entire thing. Because I was feeling some pressure, I told him to just give me a small dose and to see where we were at. If the baby was close, then there was no point in doing the epidural over.

I told the nurse I was feeling a lot of pressure and that I thought she should check me. "I can't believe it. I just can't believe this. This baby is ready!" She was so surprised that within about 10 minutes I had progressed from a 6 to a 10. It was time to go.

They called the doctor, who was luckily just in the parking lot not very far away. But it still felt like forever until he arrived. It was hard not to start pushing right away, and it was uncomfortable waiting. But within a few minutes, he was there and we started pushing. After only a few sets of contractions, Austin Rose was born and 3:15 pm. The doctor and nurses thought it was the coolest thing because she was born at 10/20/2015 at 15:15.

Lance cut the cord then put her up on my chest. I held her for a few moments before they took her to be weighed and cleaned up a bit. 

She weighed 7 lbs 6 oz and was 20.5 inches long.

We stayed in that room for a about an hour before we moved to the recovery room. Lance made a ton of phone calls while I just relaxed and enjoyed our new little girl. Because we had just increased the dose on my epidural minutes before we delivered, my legs were completely numb. I couldn't even wiggle my toes at that point. I also attempted breastfeeding, and it went surprisingly well. 

While they were transferring us to our recovery room, they took Austin to give her and bath and get her completely cleaned. She had to reach a certain temperature before they would give her a bath, so it took some time before they returned her to us. 

Lance's parents arrived a few minutes before they brought her back. They enjoyed some time with her, then my mom showed up with Will and Blake. They were both very excited to see the new baby and couldn't wait to hold her. 

The first night went fairly well. I originally sent her to the nursery, but told them to bring her back for me to feed her. Once they brought her back the first time, I just decided to keep her there the rest of the night. She was up a couple of times, and I was able to feed her and get right back to sleep. I was completely exhausted and would practically fall asleep while she was eating, but we made it through the night and I actually felt decently rested by morning. 

Wednesday was mostly just hanging out in our room waiting to see when they would let us go. We knew we would have to stay until at least 4 pm since they wont discharge you before 24 hours. And Davis Hospital provides a nicer dinner for you and your spouse that we saved for Wednesday night, so we were hoping we would be able to leave after that. I wouldn't have minded spending another night in the hospital and leaving in the morning, but financially it didn't make sense. 

There were a lot of different people coming in and out all day Wednesday. People from the hospital, talking about bills and insurance. Nurses constantly checking on me. Nurses constantly checking on Austin. My doctor came to examine me and talk about post-baby stuff. Our pediatrician came to do an exam on Austin. A couple of friends stopped by to visit. It really just seemed like people were constantly coming in and out. Something urgent came up at work and Lance had to run in for an hour or so. When he got back, the three of us finally had a moment of peace and quiet and we all spent part of the afternoon napping. 

We had some visitors that evening, then began the process of being discharged. Austin's blood sugar had been low most of the day but we finally got in back in proper levels. She did not pass her hearing test, so we will have to go back in a week to get re-tested. They said often there is still a lot of build up in the ears so they can't get a proper reading. I'm not too worried about it though.

Around 8 pm Wednesday night, we were given the ok to leave. We packed up our new amazing bundle and headed home. The kids were bouncing off the wall excited to see their new sister again. 

We are thrilled that Austin is finally home with us and we have really enjoyed the time she has spent with us.