Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Today

My sister is in town visiting for the week, so we took the kids over to Wheeler Farm today for a little excursion. Here are the kids looking out the window of a treehouse that they had a lot of fun playing at.
My mom, sister Tammi, and me

Feeding the ducks



Barbershop...

I have to show this Lego Starwars spaceship off... I built almost all of this (aside from the big long leg / wing things) but it's a 260 piece lego set and I probably did 225 pieces of it. Halfway through, it broke in half and I threw it all into a bag and walked away. However, a little 5 yr old boy really wanted it built so I pulled it all back out and started up again. Pretty intense work of art... all in the name of love.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Sleeping

These pictures are funny... as I was reducing them in size to post them, I noticed that there are lots of pictures of everyone sleeping! But let's start with the awake ones. I finally dressed Carli in some real clothes, aside from pajamas this past week, as the weather had warmed up. Outfit #1 that our dear friend Michelle sent to Carli.
Is that a smile of some sort? Looks like it to me!
Oh, it's so tiring looking so cute!
Outfit #2 (also from Michelle) and out like a light! Completely out on her favorite place to sleep!
Like I said, lots of sleeping pictures. This is an almost "never happens at our house event." Carli was asleep too and even though it was after 5:00 (I never let my kids sleep past 5) I just really enjoyed a few moments of quiet!

Saturday, April 18, 2009

New hairdo

After hearing from friends and driving by Cookie Cutters (haircuts for kids) for the last couple of years, I finally decided it was time to take Kaitlin in to get her hair done the right way, once and for all. My mom, Brian, and I have all tried to trim her hair over the last couple of years, and bless our hearts, but it was really time to get someone to do it that knew what they were doing. It was worth every penny of the $14 (not bad though!) that I spent to get her hair done, and I learned a cute new way to do it too!



Friday, April 17, 2009

Giveaway

I used to not post much Scentsy stuff on my blog, but suddenly, I have been doing just that, a lot lately! Anyway, here is this month's fun Scentsy thing:

I am giving away for free, 3 Scentsy warmers and 3 scents! So that means 3 people will get to try Scentsy for free - you get the warmer of your choice and a scent to go along with it!

However, if you are a Scentsy lover already, you are disqualified! ;) I am looking for people who have never tried Scentsy before but wants to! If you are a Scentsy lover and know of someone who wants to, that counts!

Leave me a comment and I will choose 3 people to send a warmer and scent to! Good Luck!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

BTW...

everyone keeps asking me when we're going to be up for visits... we're totally up and at 'em so feel free to drop by anytime! Going from 3 to 4 kids is not that different so life really hasn't slowed down a whole lot. I have yet to take all 4 out by myself so we'll see how that goes but we still have continued on with all of our other normal activities like the boys going to preschool, errands, playdates, and things like that. Anyway, come visit us - we're rearin' to go!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Entertainment

I looked outside the other day and saw the 3 kids sitting on the grass chatting. It was super cute.
Ever been to Michaels and checked out their super cheap crafts for kids? The kids picked out these little things to paint - $1.00 for a 2 pack with paints and paintbrush included. What a steal and it entertained them for at least an hour, if not more!






Baby

I love this picture of the kids from this morning. Carli was laying on the floor for a minute and Jackson wanted to help her get comfortable so he brought her a pillow, then a blanket, and before you know it, all of the kids are bringing out their blankets and pillows for Carli.
Last week, admist the "excitement", Carli had to spend 3 days in a photobed in our room.
Hangin' out
Lovin' that hospital binky





Easter

Every year, Aunt Jodi does an Easter party for all her nieces and nephews. She supplies the baskets filled with goodies and hides over 10 dozen eggs in her backyard! She's awesome!
checking out "the goods"
getting ready for the hunt

the morning of Easter...

New blog name...

In an attempt to change the name of our blog, I lost alllllll of the links to my friends and family's blogs - UGH! So will you please post your blog name in comments or email it to me so I can add it back on!

Thanks!

Monday, April 13, 2009

Our new sister...

Mimi brought us all "big brother," "big sister" and "little sister" shirts so of course, we had to pose for pictures with all of us!
Kaitlin never wants the baby to "touch" her. I think she thinks she's going to bite or something!

Logan and Jackson are very proud brothers, however!

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Updates.. which has turned into a really long post!

I will have some new pics to post tomorrow... but wanted to give some updates. We had a looooong week full of 2 hospital visits, 15 blood draws / IV pokes etc... But we survived. In a nutshell, baby Carli developed this nasty diaper rash - worse I've ever seen and so I took her into the pediatrician. Our normal one wasn't there so we saw the oncall pediatrician (won't make that mistake again!) and she had us up at Primary Children's hospital twice in one day, the final visit caused Brian to spend the night there with Carli - they did 13 blood draws on her (kept missing her veins), and me at home crying myself to sleep thinking my baby was going to die! And after all that, when our normal pediatrician got back into the office, he told us that whole thing was completely an over-reaction on the on-call dr's part and he never never would have let that happen! So after some outrageous medical bills, lost night of sleep, and our baby to go through lots of unneccesary pain, we are just putting it all behind us and trying to forget!

On a positive note, in case anyone noticed, I'm not pregnant anymore. YEA! That's a GREAT feeling! I can actually bend down to pick things up again, eat whatever I want (no more diabetes - YEA!), and hold my sweet little baby!

Carli is very sweet, hardly ever cries. Just when she's hungry and even that is not much of a cry. She is hungry a lot however. She's on a 2 hour eating schedule but that got started because one of the blood tests that doctor had us do showed that she was "severely dehydrated" so she got put onto an every 2 hour schedule... now she's used to it. I'm sure it will get better, though in the night, she'll go 4 hour stretches which is nice.

I have an AMAZING mother in law, who has been with us since the day before Carli was born and will be here until this next Tuesday. She has cleaned my house from top to bottom, done all the laundry, cooked every meal, played with the kids, babysat whenever we needed her etc... I don't know what I will do when she leaves! Mom? That's right.. it's my mom's turn! buahahaha!

And I've had a couple of people ask me about my birthing story. If you don't care, then you can be done reading this post! ;) Otherwise, here we go: Brian and I went in at 7:30am Monday morning to get induced. Nurse started me on Pitocin at 8am, doctor came to hospital and broke my water at 8:50am. Labor started but not much happened for the first couple of hours. Nurses kept upping the dosage of Pitocin. Finally around 11 (I was hoping to have a baby by then!) the contractions started getting harder and harder. At 1, they were unbearable. Bless Brian's heart, he's just the best. He kept telling me how amazing I was, a trooper, etc... Those are good positive words because when you are in that much pain, you start thinking that an epidural, regardless of the headaches I get after them, sounds pretty darn good. I did get some sort of medication put into my IV which did a whole lot of nothin' except make me feel loopy for about 10 minutes. Then it was back to the hard contractions. Around 1:30 the lamest nurse I've ever come across came into my room and I said, "She's coming!" She just stared at me and I said, "SHE'S COMING!" (with Kaitlin, when she came... she came and my doctor almost missed the delivery!) I told Brian to hurry and get another nurse since this one is obviously clueless. That lame nurse checks me and says, "you're at a 6" and in my mind I said, "over my dead body!" So finally another nurse comes in and checks and says, "you're at a 10!" and I thought, "uh yeah!" So they page my doctor and tell me to not push. Do you know how hard it is to not push when that's all you want to do? So I sat there for about 5 minutes and finally Dr Robinson shows up. At this point, I'm dying. The contractions are SO HARD and I just want this kid outta me. One contraction and 3 pushes later, the baby is born. PHEW! And it didn't feel like a "flaming bowling ball with knives coming out" this time around. It did with Kaitlin but I think I was so focused on getting the baby out, that I didn't feel that pain this time around.

But wait... there is still a placenta that is no where to be found that needs to be "delivered." So after 15 minutes of my doctor not being able to find it, she has a nurse grab each of my legs and Brian said she stuck her arm, almost up to her elbow digging around in me looking for it. This went on for a good 3 or 4 minutes (felt like an hour!) The pain was unbearable. I think I about passed out. By the time it was over, I was shaking uncontrollably from the utter shock of what I had just gone through. The 2 nurses told me later they thought they were going to be sick. Brian said that my placenta looked like "hamburger" - it was coming out in pieces. Basically, I gave natural birth to twins - a baby and a placenta. It was horrid. My doctor told me that if I ever get pregnant again (which I don't plan to), I can't go natural again because of that placenta problem. Unreal. But survived. A little sore that first day but by the 2nd day, feeling much better. Glad it's over. Glad I don't have to do it again. ;)

Off to finally watch Twilight. I'm the last person on earth who hasn't seen that movie! Can't wait to see what all the hype has been about.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Welcome to the world, baby girl!


Here are two pictures of Carli Jane right after birth. Carli was born at 2:12pm yesterday after a 6 hour labor and a 1 contraction delivery. I did go natural, everyone has been wondering.. Carli was 6 lbs. 8 oz and 18 inches long. She's our smallest baby.. even smaller than Logan who was 6 weeks early! Anyway, she's adorable and so far very very good. Hardly ever cries! So far so good! ;)

Sunday, April 5, 2009

The next time...

The next time I post on this blog, we will be parents of 4 and our kids will have a new baby sister. I am getting induced first thing tomorrow morning. We will be moving our blog over to a new one eventually. I've picked out the name for it, but just haven't set it up yet - that will be somewhere down the road. We can't be the Howick Five anymore! We're all anxiously awaiting the arrival of this new one. And it will be just in the knick of time - my parents are on their way home from CA today and Brian's mom is on her way here from Idaho. We have some playdates scheduled for the week for the kids so that should be great for them. Thanks to all of our helpful friends and family!

We'll post pictures of the new little one when she arrives... I'll try and get Brian to post a pic or two the night she arrives, if he remembers. Otherwise, I'll post some when I get home.

Over and out...