OUR SONG!!!!

I am thrilled to announce that after almost 7 years of marriage we finally have a song!
We have gone back and forth trying to decide on the perfect song for us for years (since we got engaged...)and never found that perfect song that fits us. My two favorites are on the music player below, "I Never Saw Blue Like That" by Shawn Colvin, or "It feels like Home to Me" from Dawsons Creek soundtrack...
When I heard "Lucky" for the first time I just cried - this is it! I knew it! I got my hubby to listen to it and he said, "It is our song"! I was thrilled! It describes so well how I feel to be in love with my best friend! So many great times behind us and so many wonderful times ahead! It is truly a blessing!

"Lucky" Official Video With Colbie Caillat

Were you gone?

Hey! Did you notice that I have been gone? Not long after that last post I tripped on the laptop cord and it fell and the screen shattered.... So, I have been computerless. And I will be again for a few days because this is not the right screen so my hubby has to get the right one ordered.
I have a million pics to put on here - what can I say, I think Elise is one of the cutest babies ever... - but meanwhile I will share a few funny things from the past 2 weeks.

Jonathan took Elise to get her Bilirubin levels checked and Hannah walked into the room, looked in the bassinet, and asked where the baby was? I told her Daddy took the baby and she clapped her hands and said "YAY"!

Russell calls certain parts of the female anatomy "elbows". We have NO idea where this came from but the first couple of days when I was trying sooo hard to breastfeed it made for some interesting comments. "Mom, your elbow is sticking out of your shirt!" "Mom, why does the baby have to eat your elbow?" etc...

Emma said she was so bored and had nothing to do. We didn;t have time to play with her at the moment so Jonathan told her to play with Russell and Hannah. She said, "Well when I was a baby and sleeping you and Mom only had eachother to play with." Jonathan, "Yep, that is how we got Russell!"

And... another Hannah one. She loves animals soooo much and does all their sounds etc. But on Sunday morning we were talking about the cows on the milk carton because she kept making the horse sound for them - so we kept saying "cow, mooooo"! She would just roll her eyes and ignore us. So we started asking about other animal sounds and when I said "dog, what does a dog say?" Hannah said, "I'm a dog". Then the next time we asked her what a dog says it was, "I'm a dog, I'm not a cow". So apparently dogs run around saying, "I'm a dog" because that is what Hannah has said if you ask her what a dog says ever since then! LOL. I have to get it on a video because she says it in this low growly voice - sooo cute!

Alright, hopefully I will get a computer again soon and I will share pics!

Everything you never wanted to know....

Feel free to skip right over this post if you are having a great day... ;)
When Elise was born, after getting her elbow scraped on my cast, she latched on great and I thought, FINALLY - we will have a good nurser! (All of the kids have been terrible at the nursing thing. Russell was the best but I still lost all of my milk at 2 1/2 months.)
Then came the gagging and choking only to find that she had swallowed a bunch of fluid, so the nurses took her to watch her and had to suck out her stomach twice, uqualiing over 2 oz. So, her tummy had gotten pretty full with all that fluid plus all she had been eating from me. After that we could not get her to be happy cause she was STARVING. The nurse told us to only give her 10 cc's of formula so it wouldn't strech her belly - but it already had stretched so.... we gave her more so she would stop sreaming. Besides that she has the A-O incompatability so we knew we needed to do whatever we could to get the bilirubin out of her so she would not have to go on the bili bed (which was a nightmare with Hannah) and hopefully only have to do the blanket!
The nurse said the next morning (after getting VERY upset at me during the night) that it was a good thing we had done that because she had already lost 10% of her birthweight and her bilirubin levels had risen quite a bit.
So.... we borrowed a pump from the hospital and I figured I would just pump to feed her so that she could get the "best milk" and not have to worry about the fact that she now refused to latch on. Only problem.... the pump did not work for me at all... so after lots of tears and frustration and no milk we decided that we would just do formula.
And now I feel like a failure, a terrible mother that can't even feed her baby. And with the other kids even though I only fed them a couple of months - I felt like I had at least tried my hardest... Plus I am soooo fat. I can't even fit into most of my maternity clothes, and its not gonna get better because I don't have all the calories lost from feeding the baby. GROSS! And all of my emotions are spilling out my eyeballs and I can't stop crying. And my cast is really loose because the swelling from pregnancy has gone down and I hurt my stinkin arm again so I have to go back in to the Dr (another 4 hour visit probably) to get it recasted.
But right now Emma is holding Elise and the 4 kids are cuddled on the couch watching a movie and I feel so incredibly blessed. I am frustated that I will never be "that Mom" the one who looks like a hottie just weeks after giving birth (or days for some of my friends/family). The Mom that effortlessly breastfeeds her children till they are a year old and has no idea how lucky she is to be able to do that! So, even though I won't ever be "that Mom" I feel so blessed that I am able to be a Mom. These precious children bring us so much love and peace and joy. I thank heaven for them every moment - even the rough moments!
Thanks for letting me vent - if anyone even made it through that whole vent! This was more for me but I felt for some reason that I should share it here instead of just putting it on my personal thoughts blog! So, there you have it!

The Latest

Lovin' on the new lady!

The flowers from Grandma Goodman (the duck), my kids (sooo sweet - they begged J to take them to get these!), and a cake from Leanna! AWWWW! Also, we got a pretty bunch of flowers from Gore! Our house is so flowery!
Checking out the new addition

"She is so cute Mom!"

Getting some rest after a long day of.... resting!

We are not big fans of the Bili lights because we don't get to hold her as much as we would like...

She is such a contented, happy little girl!

First Bath!!!!

!

Elise with her biggest sister!

Meeting Great Grandma and Great Grandpa on Fathers Day!

Finally off the lights! Never had to do the Bili bed this time! HOORAY!

And - I want you to notice this adorable blanket!!! My friend Heidi made it for her! Is that the cutest thing ever???! Seriously - thank you again Heidi, we love it!!! (And the dress too!)

And, chillin' with Aunt Leanna! Leanna is Jonathan's sister that is living with us for the summer while she works at Gore! We LOVE having her here!

So, there you have it - our past week.... sort of! I will spare you all the details, but we have been having a great time adjusting to life with another new little one and all of the changes that come with it!

We have been so blessed to have J home with us to help and spend time with Elise.

I cannot even begin to say how grateful I am for my Mom! She has been spoiling us all rotten. She got Elise some adorable little outfits (it is nice that she has a few things of her own!), brought us dinner for days, watched all the kids for a few days, etc etc etc... Thank you a million Mom!

*We had to run to the Dr today and Elise is back up to her birth weight and healthy and strong!

Elise Annabelle

Well, we are home with our new little girl! Hooray! I will go ahead and tell you the story really quick;)
We headed in to the hospital Tuesday am at 7:30 6/16/09 and soon after getting there Dr J came in and stripped my membranes (ouch) while gelling me. I tell you - I love being induced! You get up and get a shower and get ready... so nice;) So, I was at a 3 when I got induced and that is what I was out with all of the kids (who were all born around 12-12:30). We figured it would be about the same....

After the first gel

I ended up getting gel 3 times (7:30, 10:30 and 12:30)!!!! At 12:00 (when I am normally having the baby) I was still only to a 5! Sheeesh!

After the epidural

So... I figured we were in for the long haul. I was at a 7 around 3 and my nurse said since I was having such strong contractions that if I didn't push but maybe just tried "bearing down" a bit during contractions I might dilate faster. I had had the anesthesiologist (who was AMAZING) turn down my meds an hour or so before because I was way too numb and couldn't feel enough and I did just that. After doing it 2 times my water broke! I suddenly wished I hadn't had the meds turned down.... but the nurse called for the Dr and he got there a few minutes later, ran and changed into scrubs (while he was gone I needed to push sooo bad but they had me breathe though it and wait for him to get back! I went from a 7 to a 10 and a -2 to +5 (crowning) in about 6 minutes... it was really fast! So, the Dr sat down to catch ... meanwhile I was just trying to keep the baby in... So... I said "I really need to push" and I did and she was out in 1 push!! Yay! She was wide eyed and so cute - with a perfect head and we could not have asked for a more perfect birth!
She was born at 3:15 and was 7 lbs 5 oz 20 inches long.

With Grandma!

Very happy to have her here!!!!
We were smitten from the first moment!

Awwwww!

We were pretty upset because this was going to be the first time we would get to have the kids come to the hospital....and they still didn't get to! Both Russell and Hannah were born during RSV season and so no kids are allowed at the hospital.... Then this time no one was allowed up because of the swine flu.... major bummer!

Happy Momma - so ready for a nap!

Ready for a bath!

Because of my previous falls they had me in the computer as a fall risk - so I had to wear there yellow slippers and a special yellow thing on my band... and had a big sign on my door that said, "FALL RISK". Soooo embarrassing!

Ok - so our little girl swallowed a bunch of amniotic fluid and kept throwing up, and choking.... it was scary. They had to stick a tube into her belly a couple times to get out the fluid. Poor thing. Because things didn't get better the Dr was concerned it might be more serious so they

X-ray'd into her belly to be sure that things were connected the right way. Thank heavens that they were!!!

The fall risk slippers

Elise also has type A blood which means another possible Coombs baby (since I am an O). Luckly that was negative BUT she does have the A-O incompatibility so the started her on the bili lights and since she wasn't getting better (In fact she got worse) we had to stay an extra night.... I was sooo bummed - I missed my kids and was so tired of hospital food/beds/boredom. Oh well. Had to make sure baby was ok! The nurse at night was pretty rude to us because we ended up giving he baby bottles! She was starving and since I have no milk yet I knew we needed to get something down her to start things moving (so that we hopefully would not have to do the bili bed like Hannah). Anyhow - the next morning she apologised because it really was the best thing to do - her bili levels were higher AND she had already lost 10% of her body weight! I just thought it seemed smart since she was STARVING! Besides that - they are usually worried it will stretch out the babies tummy too much to not be happy with feeding off of Mom. But with how much fluid she had swallowed, her tummy had already been stretched so... there you have it!

Anyway - we got to leave the next morning (today) around 9:30! I was soooo glad to be out of that tiny room!

Ready to go!

So cute!

Soooo ready to go!

Best Daddy EVER!

In the car seat!

Russell LOOOOVES the new baby!

Seriously - he was by far the most excited!

Cute Kids

With Grandpa!

Hannah was trying to look in her belly for what happened to the baby - it was soooo cute!

The kids all seem to love her and are doing great (so far!). Hannah has surprised us all by how excited she is and how much she loves her!

I know I am missing so much of the story - it was pretty emotional and crazy and awesome bit I will try to add in more details later, right now I need to go feed the new little love bug! HOORAY!!!!!

Oh- and I am doing GREAT! No tears and I really don't feel like I just had a baby! Just tired;)

4 days till miss NO NAME comes...

So.... here we are 4 days from D-day and still no name! YIKES! If you don't know the drama refer HERE and HERE . We actually thought we had decided, I bought letters, painted them and made them super cute and then J said, "I don't think I like that name". He is the one who came up with the name in the first place!!!! What are we going to do with him?
Here I am begging you for cute name suggestions. I have my heart sort of set on two names, but who knows, maybe you you could change my mind! So, what baby girl names do you think would go good with our family?

5 more days till we are the Thom 6! Hooray!!!!!

Luke Davis

You all have to go HERE and see the pics of the latest nephew - oh my word he is sweet! You don't have to cry like I do when I see him, but you do have to agree that he is precious! ;) It is not every day that your baby brother becomes a Dad, and I am so grateful to know what a great one he will be! We sure love Derek, Bethi, and Luke!!!!

Does this break your heart?

ksl.com - LDS Church Apostle, his wife and 2 other couples attacked in Mozambique

Shared via AddThis

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

Emma Bo Bemma!

Last week Emma had a Kindergarten end of year program that was soooo adorable! Unfortunately having just gotten out of the hospital I was exhausted and forgot the camcorder and let J take pictures. So, we have no pictures;) My Mom got a few so I will add those ASAP! Grandma got Emma a rose and ice cream treat which was so sweet. Emma loves her rose!!!
So for those who don't know Emma very well she is a pretty bright kid (she obviously does not get it from me). We have talked about skipping her to 2nd grade but were worried about the social aspects. If we did she would graduate high school at 16 (that is if she didn't skip again or take even more advanced classes - you get the idea). Her teacher told me last Friday that she had signed Emma up for a 1-2 class. I wasn't sure how I felt about this so I went to talk to the teacher about it today! Basically they are taking the top 3 kids from each K class and putting them here so they can get individualised teaching. Emma would be able to do 2nd grade work as soon as she was ready and then even work with the 2-3 class if she is getting bored. So depending on how things go she will end up skipping a grade. I like, however, that it is not a direct skip - she will do this year and if she is way ahead go straight to 3rd, but if she isn't quite ready she will do the 2-3 and then just go on to 4th. So, instead of skipping to 2nd now she will be with a group of kids that she was in K with and hopefully move along with them! I feel great about it and Emma is excited about being challenged more! Plus, she can have her associates degree or be halfway through her Bachelors by the time she is 18! Sweet!
We are so proud of Emma, she is really a sweet, smart, and helpful little girl. She is also incredibly strong willed and hard headed! Though it makes life tough sometimes, I love that about her. I know she will go far in life because she is so strong! I can hardly believe that Kindergarten is over!!!! Here we come First and Second grade;)