Saturday, November 28, 2009

BIG NEWS!

It's official... Dan got a job!!! And as if that isn't exciting enough, the job is in UTAH ... Clearfield, in fact, which is right where we're from. He will be a Systems Engineer at Northrop Grumman. There's really no way to express how happy we are about this... words just won't do. We feel like it really is a miracle! The less exciting part of it-- Dan trying to work 80 hours a week to finish up while I'm still adjusting to life as a mother of five! They want him to start in January, but it will probably be closer to March when his dissertation will be done, so we'll see. I can't believe how sad I'm going to be to leave this crazy place! This has been our home for more than five years and we're all really going to miss it. But we are so thrilled to be moving back home where our family is. Just wanted to share the happy news!

Friday, November 27, 2009

New Moon!

These girls' nights mean even more lately when I know I won't have too many more. :( We of course all went to New Moon opening night and it was so fun. I really liked the movie, but don't take my word for it, I'm super easy to please. :)

Here are the gals...

Waiting in the line:

The best vampire face I could come up with:

In the theatre with our funny teeth:)

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Will's baby announcement

The picture is Will at one week old. Thanks Dan for making the cute baby announcement for me.

Halloween part II

Is it too late for Halloween pictures? Obviously I was tied up at the hospital all day, but of course the kids got to go trick or treating! After my friend held down the fort with the kids all day (thanks Kelli!), Dan went home and took the kids to a Halloween potluck dinner in the village and out for trick or treating. Here they are:



Dan says their favorite part was handing out the candy when they got home. Max would run out and try to recruit trick-or-treaters. Here's the little video Dan took of the kids for me to watch. :)

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Will's home!

We all made it home and are doing great! I'd been so nervous about this labor being too fast to get to the hospital. And I was especially preparing myself for the fact that I wouldn't be getting an epidural. But things couldn't have gone better! My water broke which was awesome because it gave us time to get to the hospital before I was even having regular contractions. Once we got to the hospital, they got us all settled checking in, giving me the IV, putting in my epidural, and voila... two hours later Will came out in just one push. It was heavenly. :)

Having Will in the NICU helped balance out how easy delivery was. :( We really should be getting used to this, but the NICU is such a pain. I hate it. I couldn't hold or feed Will for a couple days which was so sad. His platelets wouldn't stabilize so they had to keep poking him and giving him IVIG treatments. They're still trying to figure out why our babies have this problem, but basically something about my antibodies kill my babies' blood platelets and then my antibodies stay in his blood and keep at it. Hopefully by next time we'll have some preventative treatment to do during pregnancy to avoid this again. Luckily he's just fine now and we're so happy to be home.

Finally, thank you, thank you, thank you to all my dear friends who helped make this so nice for us. We've never needed or gotten so much help. People slept over, took care of the kids, brought dinner, and it was all just amazing. Dan was able to spend lots of time with me and Will at the hospital and I am SO grateful. And today my mom is coming! We feel very blessed to have gotten so much help with this baby.

Okay, so here are a few more pictures!

The very proud Dad.


Love Dr. Schleuning! She delivered Cali and now Will and she's awesome. She didn't even have time to change from her street clothes... she just threw on some gloves and caught the baby just in time. Love her!


Loved our labor and delivery nurse, Nora... she was hilarious!


And then to the NICU for a platelet transfusion. So many tubes and wires! This time they were able to hook up everything through his umbilical cord, so no IV!


My first time getting to hold Will while he was in the NICU... and my good friend Jen, his first visitor. :)


We made it home and everyone finally got to hold Will for the first time. They all adore him of course!


We got a little costume for him just in case he was born before Halloween. We couldn't put it on him while he was in the NICU, but since he was born on Halloween, we just had to get a picture. His yawn kind of looks like a little roar. :)