Introducing. . .

Cameron Joseph
8 lbs 3 oz.
21 1/2 in. long

I can't believe Cameron is already 1 week old! It seems like I just brought him home yesterday. Last Thursday I went to the hospital early and, after an ultrasound to confirm that the baby was still breech, had Cameron at 9:48. I wasn't thrilled about having to have a c-section, but having a healthy baby boy was definitely worth the surgery. I just never felt great about the doctor trying to turn him, so I'm very happy with my decision. Having said that, however, it's not something that I will do again, given the choice. My blood pressure drops really low after surgery and this one was no exception. During the first couple of days after the c-section, I could barley lift my head without feeling dizzy and nauseous. It was lovely. I even passed out in the bathroom! Yay. Loved that! Luckily, Aaron was in there with me. I was sitting on the edge of the bathtub because I felt really light headed and the next thing I knew Aaron was holding me saying "Lori, your scaring me." With Taylor, I felt pretty good and was up and moving around shortly after she was born. Not the case this time, but it was all worth it. Honestly, I could not ask for a better baby. He rarely cries, wakes up only once a night to eat, sleeps most of the time, and when he's awake, he just looks around. I am so in love with the little guy. He has been getting a lot of love from his sisters and dad too. Kylie and Taylor have been little mommies and a great help this whole week. It's nice having older kids that are so willing to help.

My last belly shot before Cameron was born

This is just after he was born. It is such a surreal feeling when you hear that cry for the first time. You know that there is a baby inside of you, but it still seems like such a miracle that they are crying and breathing and real. It's almost a shock to think that you are a now a mother or a mother again and that this tiny little baby has been sent to you. It is a spiritual experience like no other.

This is the first time that he was placed in my arms.

These two pictures were taken a few days after he was born. It always feels so nice to bring your baby home.

Happy Anniversary and a HUGE Thank You!

Today is my Parent's 45th Anniversary!

Happy anniversary Mom and Dad! Don't they look great? I honestly couldn't ask for better parents and examples throughout my life. I grew up in such a great home! I only remember them fighting one time (and even then, my mom just went and sat outside in the suburban). Sure, they have disagreed about things, but they don't fight with each other about them. I remember getting in a fight with Aaron after we got married and I thought our marriage was doomed because I had never experienced having my parent's fight in my home. I just want them to know how much I admire them and their love for each other!

They were both here when I got home from the hospital on Saturday and stayed until Friday. They have helped me so much this past week and I just want them to know how much I appreciate it. This morning, on her anniversary, my mom spent her time deep cleaning my house so I wouldn't have to worry about it for another week. She cleaned bathrooms, vacuumed, swept, mopped, did dishes, washed sheets and made beds, etc., etc.

Thank You Mom and Dad! I hope you have a great anniversary!

Also. . .

A great big Thank You to my beautiful niece, Megan, who came and helped out Saturday - Wednesday. She helped out so much with the girls and Cameron. My girls love to be around their totally cool cousin. She mixed a bunch of fingernail polish to get just the right shade for each of them. How cool is that?!

Thanks Meg!

Kylie's Surgery

Last week, Kylie got her tonsils and adenoids removed. We have been meaning to do it for a really long time, but have put it off because of school. So, we finally decide to get it done right before the 4th, causing her to miss the parade and 4th of July fun. How rude of us. She was actually a trooper and didn't even complain about missing out on a fun holiday. She did however, feel bad that Aaron was going to take Taylor to the parade, so Taylor said that she would stay home and jump on the trampoline with dad instead, so Kylie didn't feel left out. I thought that was very big of my little 3 year old!

Here are a couple of pictures right before Kylie went into surgery. The doctor did a great job and it only took him 20 minutes. Right after surgery, she was pretty upset and had a hard time breathing. It is so hard to see your child in pain. They had the respiratory therapist give her a breathing treatment that helped with the swelling so she could breath a bit better, but the feeling of her airway closing up scared her and made it even worse. Eventually, the swelling went down and she calmed down quite a bit.





After she came back to recovery, Kylie was a tough cookie and asked to be released from the hospital sooner than the nurses were planning on. After promising to drink plenty of liquids, they let her come home a little early. For the first couple of days, she was in a lot of pain, but she has bounced back and let us drag her around to a baby blessing and a doctor's appointment in the last couple of days.






Aaron snapped a quick picture of me while we were hanging out in the hospital room. I think this may be the only belly shot I have gotten with any of my kids. This is my 38 week belly. I only post it because I promised my friends that I would. Actually, I promised that I would about 10 weeks ago, but put it off. I should have done it a few weeks ago when I was still a cute pregnant girl and not a whale! I found out last week that the baby is breech, so we opted to do a scheduled c-section this Thursday. I'm really bummed because I was going to have a no-epidural, quick labor. Obviously, things aren't going the way that I planned. An external version, where they turn the baby was also an option, but, after talking a lot about it and talking to the doctor yesterday, Aaron and I decided to just do the c-section. So, it looks like I will be having a baby on Thursday!

Happy Anniversary, Babe!

Happy Anniversary Aaron!

It's been 9 years!
I can't believe that we are old enough to have been married for 9 years! Thanks for being such a hard working, dedicated husband and an awesome dad to your two girls!

I love you!

The Hair Cut

I guess I knew the day would come, but I still hoped that Taylor would somehow bypass the hair cutting experiment. It's a bit devastating for me when my girls take the scissors to their hair because they have both taken forever just to get hair. So here is Taylor's self hair cut. . .



Notice the reflection in the mirror--half of the back is missing :) Luckily, she just cut a little section out of the bangs. It could have been much worse. Although, I do have to say that I am now glad that she cut it. It forced me to cut off some of the length, which was badly needed. Here is the after cut. . .









And, just to prove that we did, in fact, have an Easter, I thought I'd post a few pictures. We went to my parent's house for the weekend and had a great time.

Our not-so-exciting week

It has been a long hard week for Kylie and Taylor. Kylie has been battling a bad sore throat and fever the past few days and Taylor has been in a huge amount of pain. On Tuesday she had a couple of small cavities filled and decided that she would "wake up" her numb cheek and tongue by biting them over and over again. I reminded her all day long not to bite her lip/cheek/tongue, but she didn't really understand the consequences of doing it. On Wednesday, the entire inside of her cheek was white, as if it was one huge canker sore. She was in a lot of pain, but was still able to drink and eat yogurt. Yesterday and today have been harder because the left side of her tongue is also covered in white canker type sores and she's had a fever. I don't think she has had anything to eat for two days. I've tried everything (yogurt, jello, pudding, ice-cream, etc.) She tries to eat, but after the first attempt she walks away crying and stopping, wondering why it hurts so bad. She has had some chocolate milk and a little bit of jello water, but that's about it for the past two days. I hope it gets better soon because it is killing me to see her in this much agony. She'll be okay for a little while and then just suddenly scream out in pain.

Aaron came home tonight and tried talking her into swishing salt water around in her mouth so it would heal faster. I can't imagine how much that would hurt (it's bad enough with just one little canker sore, let alone half your mouth)! In the end, Taylor would have nothing to do with the salt water (thank goodness--I don't think I could have watched her go through any more pain), so I guess we just keep giving her pain medication and hoping that it gets better soon.

Kylie's fever has gone down and she's feeling a lot better. She wanted so badly to go play with a friend today, but I insisted that she stay home. When she asked me why, I told her that her eyes still looked a little dull and that her cough was still bad. Through her tears, she told me that her eyes were lying and that she felt great inside (she also tried to make her raspy voice sound normal and muffle her coughs). She has been so bored this week.
Kylie loves loves loves school and has a hard time just sitting and not doing anything.

I need to be better at playing with her. I have a new goal to play pretend or board games or whatever with her every day. I tell her that we can play after I'm done with the dishes, after I've folded clothes, swept floors, etc. By that time, I'm making dinner and then I'm cleaning up dinner, and before I know it, it's bedtime. I'm seriously so ashamed with myself for putting those things before playing with my little girls. Who cares if the house isn't completely picked up when Aaron gets home from work? Who cares if there are dishes sitting in my sink? They don't! All they see is that their mommy cares more about cleaning the house than she does them.

It makes me incredibly sad and guilty thinking that I have let them down in that way. I want to be the mom who plays with her kids and continues to have strong relationships with them as the years go by. They grow up so fast and I'm afraid that if I don't do the things that are important now, I will miss out on so much. From now on, I'm putting them first. I've already let too many days slip away from me. You can't go back. My girls will know that they are my number one. I'm not letting one more day go by without getting down on the ground and playing with my kids. I'm not.

She looks sweet . . .

But, looks can be deceiving.


Honestly, most of the time, Taylor is a sweet and very funny little girl, but every once in a while (or daily) she can turn into a little spitfire. This weekend, Aaron went dirt biking in Southern Utah, so the girls and I decided to come and visit my parents for the weekend. My little brother, Michael, happened to be home from college for the night as well. This is a conversation that Taylor and Michael had last night:

Michael: (Seeing that Taylor was punching holes in a piece of paper with a staple remover) Hey Taylor, do you like destroying things?

Taylor: Yeah, and I like to chase people so I can destroy them.

Michael: What?! How do you destroy other people?

Taylor: Uh . . . (completely serious) kick them, punch them, hit them.

Michael: Do you know what destroy means?

Taylor: Yes, you destroy someone by kicking or hitting them. . .

Yikes! While I am glad that she can hold her own, I am just a little bit disturbed by her casualness when it comes to destroying someone else.

Last weekend my brother and sister-in-law had their little girl (whom they've had for 1 1/2 years) sealed to them forever! Yay! They have been trying to adopt her for months now and it finally is legal. I'll have to post some pictures soon. Anyway, we were all eating lunch after the sealing when Michael heard an unusual sound coming from the toy room. He went in and saw Taylor growling and holding a plastic sword above her head, ready for an attack. A few feet away from her was a 4 year old boy frozen in place (probably with fear). Michael caught the sword just as Taylor began swinging at the little boy. Apparently he had been hitting her with a plastic shovel, but still!! Growling? Was that necessary? Oh man, what to do with this girl.

By the way, these pictures were taken last year. I'm on my parent's computer, so the selection of photo's isn't great. I think that she was still sweet when these pictures were taken. In truth, Taylor really is a sweet super lovable little angel, she just has a problem with her temper at times. Any ideas of how I can help her tone down the temper a little bit?

Home for the Holidays

Christmas day, we braved the storm and traveled to my parents house. It was so much fun spending a few days with my family. Playing games is one of our favorite things to do when we all get together, and we played plenty of them. We played "Would you Rather" one night and it is now my favorite game. The goal is to land on a "challenge" spot so you can progress in the game. My brother Greg chose a challenge that allowed us to position him in any way during two more turns. We decided that he had to stand with a full glass of water over his head. Micheal (another brother) chose a challenge to hold a pickle between is nose and upper lip. He hates pickles, so it truly was a challenge for him.





Taylor had a lot of fun playing with Evie. One afternoon, they both made beds in clothes baskets and fell asleep with their barbie dolls. It was so adorable. We also braved the wind to build a snowman and go sledding. Taylor surprised me by sledding down head first on her back and Kylie got pretty adventurous on the steep hill.

Christmas

This year we stayed home for the first time ever. It was nice for the girls to wake up in their own beds and open their gifts in their own living room. Aaron and I did a couple of big projects this year that we thought would take us a just few hours. After going to bed at 3 am for 4 nights in a row, we realized that it was a much bigger undertaking than we originally thought. The first picture is of a doll house that our friends gave us. We stripped it down and replaced the wallpaper with paint and all of the carpet with some leftover from our house. It turned out nice, but I nearly had a psychotic breakdown after scraping wallpaper out of miniature rooms for hours. Aaron's project was to create a puppet theater. I asked him if he could make something simple that we could fold up and put away when it was not being used, but he went in a more complex direction. I love it and think that he did a great job, but it is so heavy and once we place it in our basement, it will not be moving for a long time. I do still need to make a cute sign and maybe a chalk board to hang on it. Another project of mine was sewing the puppets for the many shows we will be putting on. It was a big project considering I haven't touched a sewing machine in years. And, luckily, Santa did a great job this year and brought the girls exactly what they asked for. In the years past they have gotten more of what Mommy wanted them to get rather than what they really wanted. This year, Santa was much more wise and listened a little closer.

What a Slacker!

I haven't just been a slacker at updating my blog, I've also procrastinated putting up the few Christmas decorations that I have. But, Saturday we finally made it look a little more festive in our house and I have a couple of pictures to prove it!

I really need to get some new pictures framed. Both of these were taken about 2 years ago. Oh well, they are still cute.

Halloween

The elementary school gave permission for the kids to wear hats to school, but no costumes, so Kylie decided to sneak Taylor's hat out of the house when she wasn't looking. She wore orange tights with witches (look familiar Lexi?) and matching hair clips and bottle top necklace that her awesome cousin, Megan, gave her. She made such a cute little witch.

After getting her witch hat back, Taylor transformed into a witch and Kylie dresses as a girl from the Fifties. Kylie loves to look pretty, so this costume fit her well. I was super sick that day and had, of course, procrastinated making the poodle for her skirt until the very last minute. I had a solid two weeks to do it, but I put it off until 4:30 that evening. After having no luck trying to glue it together (I didn't really think that glue would work, but the lazy side of me decided to try it anyway) I spent a full hour sewing all of the fir on the poodle, and then the poodle on the skirt.


Taylor loved being a witch, but threw around the idea of turning herself into a princess the whole night. I loved that she absolutely believed that the magical powers came along with the costume.

I love my beautiful little girls!

Yummy. . .

Hungry? Kylie's class had to bring cupcakes for the Halloween Carnival cupcake walk, so I made these scrumptious looking cupcakes. My super creative brother and sister-in-law are the brains behind these beauties (I am sooo good at stealing other people's ideas). Thank you Greg and Summer for the great idea. It is just white frosting with thinned strawberry jam (with a few drops of red coloring to deepen the red color) and foil wrapped chocolate.

Family Night with Friends

Last week, we had our friends over to carve pumpkins. The kids were excited to carve, so the adults graciously let them clean out the pumpkins so we could carve them. Wasn't that so nice of us? Luckily, they all believed us when we told them that the cleaning was the best part.






We took a few pictures outside in the dark. I couldn't see anything until the flash went off, so I wasn't able to get a good picture with all of the kids. The pumpkin's looked great though (until the flash flooded them with lights.) Aaron was so proud of his witch, that he went out later and took more pictures. It does look pretty good, but can't quite top my Jack-O-Lantern (never mind the fact that I accidentally cut the eye balls off of mine). I practically had to beg Aaron to include mine (oh, I mean Kylie's) in the picture with his (or Taylor's.) Who are we kidding--we totally stole the pumpkins from the kids and had fun carving while they sat there bored.