Baby Will is in the house!

It happened. Our baby was born on Halloween, early this morning. Karen's water broke while we were watching Monk, at 8:45 p.m. Friday night. We hurried as fast as we all could, but the little guy didn't make it out in time. Happy Halloween, baby Will!

Name: Will James Briggs
Weight: 8 lb 5 oz
Length: 21 inches
Time of arrival: 2:10 a.m., October 31, 2009

Will has three great namesakes to look up to. He is named after two of his great-grandfathers, William Halls and Wilmer Barlow, and after his Grandpa James Barlow.

We were hoping for better news, but we were not surprised that Will was born with a critically low blood platelet count. So he is stuck in the NICU for now, and hopefully the platelet transfusion goes well. We'll post an update with more pictures later.

Here are a few pics. Does my girl even look like she's in labor?

No baby yet...

I went the Dr. again today, and we're not going to get induced (for now, at least.) I hope we can wait one more week for when my mom can come. Now we just need to get past Halloween!

Sweet Cali Anne

Today just might be the last day that sweet Cali is my baby... kind of bittersweet. She has definitely been a spoiled little girl at our house for the past two years. I hope she does okay with the new baby!

Hooray for FALL!

You know the feeling you have right before you have a baby that your life is pretty much going to end? I know it's not really that way, but the past couple weeks I've felt like I had to do everything on my to-do list for the rest of the year. That must be the reason for my sudden blog burst this weekend... cramming before the baby.

Anyway, today was the first time it really felt like Fall for me... warmer than the brisk ones I grew up with in Utah, but still, the Fall feeling all the same. It started with watching Game Day LIVE from Provo... very cool. Then we headed off to the Village for our our pumpkins, free pumpkin pie, then back home for carving. The house still smells like pumpkins! I wish the lovely day didn't end with watching us get a big loss from TCU. :(

They're back... TAINTED LOVE!

The greatest 80's Coverband was in San Fran this week and it was Kelly's birthday request to go. :) I'm so pathetic that I can't miss just one night of fun with the girls, even when I'm 9 months pregnant and it means a whole lot of pain and contractions. This was my last night to party with the girls pre-baby so I couldn't say no!

Somehow I didn't realize at the time how embarrassing my aerobics outfit really was, but oh well, we all had a blast! Happy Birthday Kell!

Here is my fun carload getting ready to go. Once again, I have to thank these fun girls for keeping me young! I'd never do it without them!!!

Here are the rest of the girls at the club... we really outdid ourselves! I think we look even more awesome than last time. :)

Halloween Part I

I knew Halloween would be a busy time this year, but things couldn't have been easier... all the kids just picked whatever they wanted to be from our overflowing costume/dress-up box.

Here are some pictures of our great ward Halloween Party. I don't know how useful I'll be next week, so I'm glad I got a head start with some pictures of them in their costumes.

First, Max as Jango Fett and Doman as Darth Vador going to a Halloween Birthday Party. :)

Max and Lincoln trying to convince us that a police officer and Superman can be scary... no dice. ;)

Amazing friends

Last week some of my cute friends took me out for dessert at my favorite place in Berkeley... Au Coquelet... divine chocolate is what I think it means in french... just kidding, I of course don't know. This isn't everyone, but I just love my friends. I've said it many times, but I could not survive my time here at Berkeley without the amazing friends I've had. They're going to take care of everything when my babe comes next week, and we obviously couldn't do it without them. Thanks girls! You all know who you are, and you're the best!

To be induced or to not be induced...

...that has definitely been the question of the week! With pressure from my doctor (and the baby for the matter!) we are most likely going to go ahead and be induced Monday night! Our little guy could be here in just a few more days!!!

The homestretch...

Hooray!!! We finally made it to October and my due date is just a couple weeks away! :) This pregnancy has gone by fast, but it hasn't made it any more tolerable. You'd think that pregnancy should start to get easier with each one, but it's quite the opposite. Each pregnancy seems to be ten times worse than the last one... so not fair. I'm just dying to be able to breathe and walk again! Oh, and eat food! ...and sleep! Enough complaining. Let's just say it's been a rough one and we're so glad these are the final weeks!

So my doctor who will never induce me thinks that because of my "precipitous" labor with Cali(less than 3 hours), it'd be a good idea to induce this one a little early to be safe. Oh how I'd love that! I could be induced next week! Needless to say, me and the babe are set on waiting until November when my momma can be here. My friends are SO sweet, but I just hate the idea of making them take care of 4 extra kids!

It's been brought to my attention that I haven't put any pictures of me and the belly on our blog... what kind of scrapbook is that?! Well, maybe it's because it doesn't seem that exciting to see me sporting my yoga pants and t-shirts with greasy hair and no makeup. But every once in a while there's a girls' night out or church thing... plus I guess I always try to look decent for church.

So, here's the picture we took today. :)

September Update

Here I am getting blog-behind again. School starting should have given us more free time, right? But so far things have just been as busy as ever. First, getting used to all the schedules and arranging carpools so that I wasn't making 6 trips to school each day. I'm very glad that has settled down! Then all four kids went through a round of a weird flu bug one at a time.

Max's school anxiety started to set in a little bit, but he's done really great with it and seems to be enjoying school. Doman missed a week of school because of a poor injury he had to heal from. It's also been a nightmare working with the school to accommodate his disability. And ever since Lincoln got sick and missed school he has hated going back. So we're debating just pulling him out altogether. Anyway, our days are crazy and packed, which I love, but definitely not the down time I was planning on with school starting.

Otherwise... the month of September was quite uneventful. All the boys did go to the ward camp out together again this year and had so much fun. I'm sure they were glad that Cali and I didn't spoil their trip... we would have been very high maintenance.

Here's a couple pics of that: