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!

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:)

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. :)

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. :)

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:

BYU 14, Oklahoma 13!!!

If you haven't heard about the huge upset BYU pulled over No. 3 ranked Oklahoma, you must have your head stuck in the sand somewhere. All the kids watched the first quarter with us, then Karen and I watched the rest of the game after they went to bed. We were on the edge of our seats for a couple of hours as we watched history unfold. It was incredible!

Bronco expressed it best: "All I can say is, I'm very proud of our football team, I'm proud of the way they prepared, and I'm proud that they seized the chance to play on this stage, against a fantastic football team."

Here's a highlight video of the game, in case you missed it.



Now, if you're like us, and can't see enough highlight videos, here are some more.

An amazing highlight in HD
Another long highlight

Go Cougs! Keep making us proud!

First Day of School

Max heading off to 1st grade! He likes his teacher, Michelle and there are some kids in his class from last year, so he's gotten off to a great start and seems to be really liking it. That makes us all very happy!

Doman has been so excited to go to Kindergarten. He is in Kim's class and so far he's loved it.

Lincoln's been dying to go to Preschool, but I've been pretty nervous about how he'd actually do without a nap and leaving his Mama. Well, he loves it! This is our fourth year in a row at Franklin Preschool and we couldn't be happier!

Cali definitely feels a little left out when all the boys go to school, but she pretty much just takes her nap and doesn't even notice they're gone. She'll have afternoon company soon enough!