Brinley's Lemonade Stand

Through the wonderful world of blogging we've found a friend of Josh's from high school. We've been following her blog about her daughter's fight against leukemia for a long time. I've never met Kristin until Saturday. We went down to Salt Lake because they were having a fund raiser at a Smith's to raise money for childhood cancer awareness. It was really fun to meet them for the first time and to see their beautiful children. Brinley is so cute and we were so happy to donate to such a great cause. That family has been through hell and back over the past year and will continue to do so for the next year of Brinley's treatment. You can read about her story here.

While we were down there we also got to go have lunch with Rosie, Josh's mom, at Applebee's. It was so good to see her. We don't see her near as much as we would like. I definitley hit the jack pot when I married Josh, not only did I get the best husband but also the best family! We also went to visit my 3 favorite kids. DJ and I played Legos, building tall towers that kept falling down. They showed us their Halloween costumes, they were so cute! I wish we could have gone trick or treating with them.

Special Delivery

It's a long one so get prepared!

Our new nephew Gavin was born today at 1:21 pm. It was a very stressful delivery. Brit was induced and they got her going at about 8 or 8:30 am. When she got to the hospital to get started they told her she was only dilated to a 2 or 2 1/2, but on Saturday they went to the hospital and they told her she was at a 4. So we didn't know what she really was at for a while. My mom and I headed down to Layton at about 8 am, when we got to the hospital her Dr. hadn't been in to check her yet. He got there at about 10:30 and said she was almost at a 4 and he broke her water. Her contractions were getting pretty intense and it took forever for the anesthesiologist to get there. They finally got the epidural in and then things went along really quick. She dilated from a 5 to a 7 in about 20 minutes, they had at hard time getting Brit on a side that was comfortable for her and good for the baby. His heart rate kept dropping which had been the story all day, they just couldn't get the monitor in the right spot and keep it there. The nurse finally had to put the fetal monitor on Gavin's head and had to do it twice! They still couldn't keep his heart rate up, it just kept dropping. The nurse started getting a little worried and we were coming up on 1 pm. We asked if the nurses could get someone to give Brit and Gavin a blessing. No one ever came. The nurse came in and said they were going to prep Brit for a c-section. Brittiney was really scared at this point because of Gavin's heart rate and she didn't want to be away from Branson that long recovering in the hospital. They won't let kids under the age of 12 visit in the hospital because of the swine flu so Branson will be away from his mom until they discharge her from the hospital.

Since no one ever came to give her a blessing and they were wanting to take her to the OR right away, my mom said a prayer. It was pretty emotional for us 4 girls, we were crying messes. We know this stuff happens all the time but when it happens to someone in your family, it's scary. They took her in to the OR, which luckily for Wendy, my mom and I was right across the hall from the room we had been in, and came and got Jade about 5 minutes later. Her doctor finally came into the room to check out what was going on with Gavin and we had to tell him she was already in the OR, he had a panicked look on his face. So us three girls just stood in the doorway for the next 15 minutes calling everyone letting them know what was going on. We were looking through the windows on the door right into the OR room they were in but couldn't really see much, then they put the screen up so we couldn't see anything but the top of the door way. The anesthesiologist came out and said everything was going okay and that she was fully dilated and they were going to let her just try to deliver him naturally, with the help of the vacuum, instead of the c-section, we were so relieved to hear that! We stood there anxiously waiting and then we thought we heard a cry so I went up to the doors to listen through the crack and almost got ran over twice by someone coming out of the doors, cause I'm smart for standing there! Then at 1:21 pm we finally we heard him cry! We finally relaxed. Someone came out and told us he was fine, they just took him to the NICU for precaution to make sure he was okay. Then they came and said he was in the nursery so we could go see him.

We watched him get all cleaned up and get his shots. He weighs 7 lbs 6 oz and is 19 inches long. They didn't let me into the nursery to take pictures like they did with Branson so I had to do it through the glass.

We went back to the room to see Brit after they were done giving Gavin his bath. It took a while for them to finally bring Gavin in. I guess they were wanting to make sure he was warm enough. He's so sweet and has the cutest cry.

I wish Branson could have been there to see his new little brother and I could have gotten their first new family picture.

They came in to move Brittiney to the maternity room so we all caravaned down there. Once we were in the room Wendy was handing Gavin, who was still wrapped in the hospital issued blanket, to my mom just as Brit's new nurse came in and she freaked out on us and told us that we couldn't have babies in there. Brit told her it was her baby that she had just had, then the nurse said that Gavin was big. We just looked at each other like "seriously?". Brit told her what he weighed and she started saying how people were bringing their brand new babies into the hospital and that they can't because the babies were so suseptible to the H1N1 virus. She was a little bit of a fruit cake!

They are going to bottle feed him and Jade got to feed Gavin his first bottle. At first he didn't like it but by the time we were leaving he was sucking it down pretty good. Mom and I got to change his first diaper and Brittiney was up walking around by 6 pm. She was doing a lot better than I thought she would after being prepped for a c-section and given the anesthesia.We took Jade to Red Robin to get some dinner. Brittiney hadn't had anything to eat so she ordered some chicken noodle soup but it was nasty she said so we got her some dinner, too.
Jade was excited to be able to swaddle a baby again. He said that was one thing he did very well, and he really does! That baby was wrapped like a burrito!
He was sleeping on my lap and I caught him smiling, he was pulling some pretty funny faces.
He threw up after one of his feedings so I got to change his clothes. I love naked babies!
When my mom and I were leaving Jade and Brit took Gavin back to the nursery so they could go down to the waiting room and see Branson. He was so excited to see us all, he was screaming and running in circles! He was so happy to see his mom and dad. He's going to have so much fun with his new baby brother and so are we!

Happy Birthday Branson!

Today is Branson's first birthday. We had a birthday party for him on Saturday with both families. It was a lot of fun to watch him open his presents and get excited. He got his own little cake to tear apart and eat and he loved it!

He got lots of fun presents. He loves this vacuum my parents got for him. He loves to follow my mom around when she is vacuuming so she thought he would enjoy his own vacuum. It sings songs and teaches him the ABCs but he only likes it if it's on the vacuum sound. He walks around vacuuming pushing it going back and forth with a very concentrated look on his face like he's really doing it. It's hilarious!

Weekend Re-Cap

We had a great weekend. Josh is finally feeling better, the stupid cold is still lingering but he's doing better. We went to Cody and Tara's Friday night and Saturday night because Morgan came up from Cedar City for the weekend. Morgan brought her cute, little puppy Ebony. She's grown so much and is so fun. The boys and Morgan played Halo and Tara and I looked up jewelry online and played with the puppy and Athena. That seems to be the usual for our weekends lately which is good because I love hanging out with them.

We stopped by tonight to watch the Dodger game and to take them so pumpkins from my parent's pumpkin patch but Cody had been in bed all day with a terrible migraine so we had dinner with the rest of them and watched a little of the game.

We went up to my parent's today to take first year pictures of Branson while it is still pretty outside. We went up Cub River and the leaves were so pretty and it was a beautiful, warm day! My mom, Brittiney and I got some very cute pictures of our sweet boy. He's so much fun and is learning my name. We went to see Jade and Brit's new house today and when we walked in and Branson saw us he led me in his room with his hand in the air pointing at his new room, then he lead me to the other rooms just smiling. He was so excited!

Zombieland & Bakerella Goodness

This weekend has been pretty low key. Josh has had a really bad cold. I went shopping with my mom and Branson for a while Saturday afternoon. We had fun finding something for Branson for his 1st birthday coming up in a few weeks. He has learned to walk. He looks so funny walking because his legs move faster than his upper body does. Then Josh and I went over to Cody and Tara's. Tara made us dinner, she made us some very yummy Cocunut Shrimp. That is one of my favorite meals and she did a great job! Then today we went to see this movie... I wasn't very excited to see it. I had only seen one preview for it and thought it looked kinda stupid. Well it was hilarious! A little gruesome at times but dang funny!
We went back over to Cody and Tara's to have some yummy chili since it was such a gloomy, cold day. Tara and I had seen a post on Bakerella. She had made some pumpkin pie bites and they looked so yummy! We were excited to make them on Friday night but since Josh was really sick that day we decided to do it today. They were so good!
The boys always have so much fun playing Halo with each other even if it does get a little heated at times. Thanks you guys for having us over for dinner for two nights this weekend!

The Weekend Pt. 2 More Cleaning & Lucy's 1st Birthday

After Noah's game, I went back to Shannon's to do more cleaning. Rosie came and started folding like a million socks, seriously I've never seen so many socks, while I did the sweeping, mopping and more laundry. Before I headed home, Rosie and I went out to dinner. By the time we got done it was getting pretty late and Josh didn't want me to drive home alone that late so I stayed another night at Shannon's. The kids were happy to have me come back, so we fell asleep in Lu's room again watching Harry Potter. I got woken up early in the morning by the storm that was coming in. I watched the lightning for a while. I love watching lightning!

I got up and had breakfast with DJ, who was attached to me all weekend long, then got busy doing more cleaning and laundry. We had our niece, Lucy's, 1st birthday party Sunday afternoon. I had never met her until Sunday, and boy is she cute! It was so fun to meet her and to watch her open her presents and blow out the candle on her first birthday cake. There were a lot of people at the party and the kids had lots of fun playing with their party bags.

The proud papa with his two adorable kids!