Tis' the season

This year there were a lot of Santa's helpers showing up all around the valley, which was nice and allowed us to choose where we took the boys to see "Santa". Lucky for us one of our favorite places to eat, The Brakeman Grill on Main Street, was one of those places. So we got together with a couple families and planned it out to have an awesome lunch and then see Santa. It was a great lunch and a great Santa. Enjoy..

Adam turns 1!

Adam turned 1 on the 8th.

I still have a hard time grasping it.

1 year.

Looking back on the challenges of the year and of course the challenges before he came into this world, it brings me speechless.

1 year ago, we were preparing for one of the hardest and most emotional days we could imagine. Here are some of the memories that keep swimming around in my head: Bub met us up at the hospital for a blessing. It was wonderful. I remember sitting in the chapel on the Labor and Delivery floor so nervous and not being able to put a complete sentence together. Then Bill and Bub put their hands on my head and Bill gave me such a blessing. I still hold parts of it close to my heart.

Adam was really "quiet" that morning. The labor wasn't bad and it seemed like he was saving his energy to fight the battle to come.

The blue partition. If you haven't had a c-section before, then you really wouldn't understand the frustration and annoyance which is the partition. I know there are some out there that are happy it is there, but I'm not one of those. With James Dr. Huggins didn't even put it up. It was so great. I was relaxed, so relaxed they didn't strap my arms down.
Oh, strapping my arms down. Not for the claustrophobic. a big blue partition and you cant move.

They kept putting the mask on and saying my blood pressure was dropping too low. I would look at Bill and roll my eyes. Then he would say something to the effect of "you need oxygen to breath so it has to be on." Then he would hold my hand tighter.

Holding my breath. Actually, I think it was more of I didn't think to breathe.

Knowing he should be out and making noises, seeing scrubs moving fast around my head and seeing the look on Bill's face. I'm sure it was a mirror of what mine looked like.

Knowing he was out and still not hearing anything except the nurse telling me I have to keep breathing.

The tiny cry as they were passing him through the window to the NICU and the tears that followed.

A really annoying alarm that kept going off and more reminders to breathe.

Fading in and out until I recognized the voices of those wonderful people in my recovery room.

More alarms, more nurses telling me to breathe and being shaken when I didn't respond. One of the clearest memories I have is laying there on the bed thinking to myself "this is cool. I don't need to breath. I don't even want to. Wow. I wish they would turn off that noise, its annoying."

Not breathing to panic attacks because no one was telling me what was going on with Adam and Bill.

Mindi coming in and letting me know he was okay, Bill was with him and they were giving him oxygen. 

Seeing his IV in his head and holding the tears back, willing myself to stay strong.

4 hours of skin-to-skin in the NICU. Watching his SATS go from constant concerned monitoring and high oxygen, to being completely free of everything all in 4 hours.

His first feeding, 16 hours after birth.

Waking up in a panic because he wasn't in my room and then biting on my tongue so I didn't cry.

Visitors!! All the visitors were a more welcome sight then you'll ever know.

Nancy and Kristen, all the way down from Idaho with a butterfinger shake and so much love.

Cookies!!! Big, soft, loaded with frosting, flower shaped sugar cookies. All I have to do is think about them and I crave.. CRAVE!! them. I did share one of the 4 cookies with my nurse. I think Bill may have had a pedal or two. Thank you Laura!!

Hours and hours rocking, feeding and talking to Adam in my little curtain covered corner of the intermediate nursery.

The overflowing feeling of gratitude when we were told he would be discharged with me.

 If ever we need a reminder of the miracles and grace of our Heavenly Father, all we have to do is look at Adam.
 

My favorite time of year!

Yes, for most people this is Christmas but not for me.  My favorite time of year is HALLOWEEN baby!!

Seriously, most people have Christmas traditions; we have Halloween traditions. Don't worry, we have a few Christmas traditions as well.

This year was even grander than years past. What can I say, I was trying to make up for not being home and not being able to hold these traditions last year.  Blah, blah, blah.. on to the traditions you say?

*October 1st:
October 1st is a day set aside for putting every Halloween decoration I own around the house. It usually takes most of the day due to the spider webs that take forever sometime to get right.

It is also the first day of carving pumpkins. I see it as a great kick start to the season, we get our family carving done, so we know the kids have carved a pumpkin (yes when I say kids I only mean Ethan) and its a great Family night activity for the week.

*Mondays: (and I do mean every Monday)
At the beginning of the month we put together a list of families we would like to have over to carve pumpkins. We brake it down and separate everyone into a Monday. We hand out invitations, or text when it gets too close, and bring the 8 ft table upstairs.
It was a couple Mondays with a crazy house full of kids, food and plenty of fun carving up the pumpkins. We ended up with some great and original jack-o-lanterns.  Enjoy!


Monday the 8th we had the Rogers, Jenkins, Pattersons, Johnsons and Bagleys


Monday the 15th we had the Crows, Godfreys, and Hawkins's


Monday the 22nd we had the Thomas's, Marcums, Georges, Colsons, and Stevens's
 We weren't able to get a picture of all the pumpkins since some families had to leave a little early.

This year October 1st landed on a Monday so that worked out well. I wish I would have taken photos of our carving, but for some reason I can't remember I didn't take any. So close your eyes and imagine a Storm trooper, a rebel emblem, and a fence, cat, moon scenery.  Awesome right??

*The Decor:
Every season I get to add one more decoration to the decor. I am exceptionally proud of this years pick.

Isn't that just AWESOME??
What makes it even better is the fact that I made it myself... alright, with the help of Terry and his mad wood cutting skills.
Terry cut all the wood to my specs and i put it all together.
I screwed it all together
Painted it to the right shades
Made the stencil
Painted the lettering and characters
Printed the countdown numbers
and put it in the entryway

I love the way it turned out. The original that i based my sign from said "its all about the candy" and had candy corn all over it. For me, I could care less about the candy. Its all about the costumes, its the one day a year I get to dress up and no one thinks I'm strange. Well stranger than they already do.

*The Costumes:
Oh the costumes!! this year Bill and I had the opportunity to go to Disneyland and to Mickey's Halloween Party. When we go again, it will be during the Halloween season. I saw more elaborate and original costumes at the party than I have ever seen. It was spectacular!! (more about this in another post).
Ethan finally (and I say that rolling my eyes) decided on Batman. Unfortunately for me it was decided as I was 3/4 done with his bat costume. You would think I could just switch it over, but nope, didn't look right at all. Luckily he spent a few days at Grandma Ellett's and she whipped him up a costume suitable for Batman. Ethan drew up the mask and I cut it out. He loved it, so I couldn't change it.
James was Ironman. He has been obsessed with Iron Man since Avengers came out. It ended up being cheaper for me to buy the costume than to make it, so that's what happen. I did make him "Ironman hands" back in September, which worked out great as an addition to his costume.
Adam got to be Yoda. All the boys have now been Yoda at one Halloween or another. It was great and he kept the hat on the whole time.
I, of course, was my normal witch. I'm still missing a hat, but I'm particular about what it looks like so I will continue to be hat-less until I find it.
Bill put on his Jedi cloak and pulled out his certified replica lightsaber, which got more attention the darker it got.


*Trick-or-Treating:
Apparently last year the trick-or-treating was crazy in our neighborhood. Makes sense, we are one of 3 neighborhoods in a 10 mile radius. So I thought I was doing good getting 11 bags of candy.
Boy was I wrong!
This year is the first year our ward did not hold a trunk-or-treat, thank heaven! I'm not a fan of trunk-or-treat. I see the advantages to those who live a bit out of the town, but what would end up happening is this; Our ward would park our cars and hand out candy while everyone in the valley (and I do mean the ENTIRE valley) would come drop their kids off and then pick them up when they were done. Then you get the ones that keep going around and around like they are tied to a horse pull. Anyway I'll get off my box and continue with the night.
Needless to say it was CRAZY! the amount of people made me grin.  Most everyone parked by the entrance and the mailbox building, so the only through traffic was those that live in the hollow. It was incredible. Bill and I split the hollow in half and I took Ethan and James out first. We were able to walk down the middle of the street without worrying about a car. There were kids of all ages and costumes running everywhere with parents dressed up walking and talking with everyone. It was nostalgic. It was the first Halloween we have had up here that was truly how Halloween is supposed to be.
Oh! did I mention the headless horseman that was riding around the hollow?

*Updated picture. Thank you Ashley for the awesome picture* The picture isn't that great(I'm trying to see if anyone else got a good picture). Yup, that's right. Bet ya can't say you saw a headless horseman while trick-or-treating.

The only down side was the candy. I didn't plan for the amount of people that came! I even dumped out James's bag and passed it out. By 7:15 we were out of candy. There was one cool parent who came up with his kids and had a big bag of candy in his hands. He grabbed a handful and dumped it back into my cauldron  I thought that was really neat that he would think to do that. So all in all we passed out 12 bags of candy and there were still people going close to 9.

Next year I will be looking for candy donations. if you don't have my address i'll be happy to correct the problem!

This Halloween was one of the best I can remember. I can't wait to see what next year brings!

A little late but still great

I got looking at my camera the other night and realized there are SOOOO many pictures I haven't blogged yet. Not just pictures, but important pictures. Like, Ethans Birthday!! Seriously I feel like a bad parent. As it states in the title "A little late but still great", here is Ethans birthday post.

 

Ethan had some of his friends over for a couple hours to celebrate his birthday. It was a wonderful tornado of boys.

Like mother like son

Alright, I thought I better get a post up about the colorful skin in our family as of late.

So to come straight out with it...

I fell in the window well. Completely my fault. We needed to fix the actual window well in order to make the awesome rod iron grates my dad made for us fit correctly. I walked by it more than a dozen times and thought to myself "I really need to fix that." but of course, I never did.  So two Saturdays ago I was going to talk to the boys in their room and I stepped on exactly the right spot to make the grate pop up and we (the grate and I) fell down into the window well.  Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the first day.

This next one should be titled "Why you should never ride on top of the bubble car in the basement" or maybe "What happens when your head kisses the concrete", either way I'm sure you have grasped what happened.
The Monday after the window well incident Ethan was downstairs playing with the neighbor when I heard a smack and a shriek.  When I got downstairs he was holding his nose, which was bleeding, so I picked him up and stood him over the sink. Once we got the bleeding stopped from his nose I started checking his teeth and lips. He split his lip pretty good but not enough to get it glued so we started cleaning that up. That is when I looked up and noticed his head.
I tried my best to keep the shock out of my voice and told him he needed to go lay down and we were going to put ice on it. I don't think he really knew how bad it was until I took a picture and showed him.

Amazingly he didn't show any signs of concussion. however we took precautions anyway. We woke him up every couple hours and asked him questions, to which he got really angry and would finally answer so we would leave him alone.
It took longer than I thought it would for his eyes to go black, but they definitley did..

Yellowstone

This summer we have had family come up and venture into Yellowstone National Park with us.
It was great seeing all the wild life, bubbling water and not so great smells.

It is great to finally be able to say I have seen Old Faithful.

Thanks!!

where to start

So many posts, so little time.

some more random, but awesome, pictures/videos.

getting James eyes checked

James had his eyes checked and while they were dilating we went over to the park.

twos company

This is how I found Adam when he woke up from his nap.

gymnastics

Ethan took a gymnastics class this past spring. The last day it was family day and we all came to watch him.