Pumpkin Patch 2012

So there's this cool pumpkin patch on the westside of town that's pretty awesome. And I mean really awesome because it's FREE! Can't get any better than free! We decided to get some cute "Halloween" pictures there which was amusing in a way. So out of the million or so pictures we took, these were the best ones. To go through all the pictures is a real treat but I'll spare you all the amazingly long post that it would be.

One of our attempts. 2 out of 4 crying, one sorta smiling and another distracted by the hay. 

Getting 2 kids to smile and look in the general direction of the camera is much easier.

Best picture out of the million. We have 2 out of 4 smiling, no one looking at the camera, but no one crying. I'd call that a success!  

They had an awesome corn pit where the kids played the majority of time. Grandpa buried Landon all up in it. It's much cleaner than say, sand!

 This probably would have been a better picture of them all being scarecrows except that the sun was right in their eyes. So this wasn't too bad considering the circumstances!

Nothing big here, it's a slide.

Total Randomness

These are just some cute pictures (well I think of course they're cute, they're my kids!) that I saw from early October. We hung out a lot at home since Caleb was just born.

Someone in my ward makes these hats. The kids LOVE them!

We were telling Cody to smile so this is what he got. He was too involved in his painting!

Okay, now here's a real smile.

And just because, here's Landon wondering why I'm taking a picture of him. Honestly, I was trying to work with the lighting to see what kind of picture I could get. He had just gotten in trouble so he's like, am I still in trouble?

Caleb at 1 month

My goodness I'm behind on posting! I'm going to forget everything about him if I don't write it down!

I attempted a photo shoot with him since his scab finally was gone. He's 2 1/2 weeks here. If I do say so myself, I'd say they turned out not half bad. Now if I had editing skills, or an actual program that did do editing (we don't have one), they'd probably look better. But oh well! 

I just love the wrinkles on his forehead! Not great lighting in this picture but he looks so darn cute!!!

Is that a little smile I see?

 Okay, photo shoot over. He's such a cutie! In his first month, he slept a lot. The first week was tough as it has been with all the kids. I've been asked a lot how it's been with 4 kids now. It's about the same as having 3. It doesn't matter if it's your first, fourth, or tenth kid. Newborns are tough! Just glad that part is over. Phew! He slept awfully the first month. Every 2-3 hours he was up during the night. I guess that's pretty normal for newborns though so I shouldn't say he slept awfully but he slept like a newborn! He doesn't suck on a pacifier which makes it hard for him to figure out what to do on those rare occasions that he is awake and not eating. All the siblings are getting along fine with him. Carly has shown the most interest. She wants to hold him a lot but when she gets him, within about 2 seconds she's saying, "ah done", and starts pushing him off of her. We did his baby blessing at 3 1/2 weeks. My in-laws came to visit twice. Well, my mother-in-law came after he was born to help out and then both my MIL and FIL came in town for the baby blessing. I was sleep deprived and hating  nursing, as I always do, the first month. About the 3-4 week mark, nursing started getting a little better, as in I didn't want to stab myself in the eye every time I nursed him. It was an improvement and I powered through!

Cody's trying to make him take a pacifier. I wish he would!

Sleeping cause that's what he does best (well, not the best but what he does the most in between eating every 2-3 hours)

Another sleeping picture because, what the heck is going on with his hands!

Trying to get a picture. I swear I did sorta get ready! 

Balloon Fiesta 2012

This is what happens in the fall here in Albuquerque. We get hot air balloons landing right behind our place! The first week in October is the Balloon Fiesta. Since we'd just had Caleb, we decided we weren't going to go to the balloon park this year and see the balloons off.  I didn't want to get out there after just having had a baby like a week before!! I guess they just had to come to us! 

This is just over our backyard fence

Looking out from our window

There were people parking and getting out on our street to help them

One of the fun things to do, help deflate the balloon!

Taking pictures in our jammies by the balloon

You can't really tell but that's Landon in the middle helping push the balloon into the bag.

And he's in there somewhere! Almost completely covered.

Picture with the pilot of the balloon. See that tree behind her? The balloon almost hit that, and the fence behind there too!

Caleb Kenyon

He's here! We had Caleb on September 24th. Some people have been asking about his birth story so here it is. If you don't want a TMI, here's the short version:
Contractions, hospital, almost turned away but my doctor came up and said no your good, antibiotics, epidural, more antibiotics, break water, wait a little bit, try and push out a baby, taking a long time, eventually have baby at 5:36. Yeah! The end.

Now, the long version:

Sunday night, I went to bed but he started moving around like crazy at 10:45. I couldn't sleep at all with him moving so much so I got up and just hung out in the loft while I waited for him to stop moving so much so I could go to bed. At 12:45 he stopped moving and I went to bed. However, almost immediately when I laid down, I starting having some cramping. I had this with Landon and I knew this wasn't real labor so I thought it'd either go away or last a really long time. I'm trying to fall asleep during them but wasn't able to sleep at all. 3:30 rolls around and I have my first "real" contraction. I noticed a difference in this contraction. By 4:00 I start timing them. They're about 2 minutes apart but only 30 seconds long. John wakes up for work at 4:45. He starts getting ready and I let him know that I haven't slept at all. He's thinking, well that sucks! Then I tell him not to be alarmed but I've been having contractions all night. He's like, do we need to go to the hospital? I tell him to go to work real quick (he had something he had to finish up) and I was going to finally pack my hospital bag. So he goes to work and I start packing a bag, take a shower, and cleaning up a couple things. At 6, I start calling people to set up the kids for the day. My mom and dad show up at 7 and we leave a little after for the hospital. At this point, my contractions were still going as long as I was moving around. When I sat down though, they'd stop. So I'm worried at this point that maybe I'll get turned away when we get there. 

We get to the hospital and go to the triage room to check and see if I'm really in labor or not. The nurse checks things out and says I'm only at a 3 so there are 2 options. 1, I can walk around for a while to get the contractions good and going hopefully or 2, I can go back home. We decide that we want to talk to my doctor. He's actually on call (which we were so excited about) so he comes up 20 minutes later. He's happy I'm there because he was thinking of when to set up an induction if we needed one and what day and all that jazz. Because I'd had a c-section before and wanted to do vbac (which was successful with Carly) my doctor likes to be the one to do it, and I have to be monitored a little more closely than normal. Anyways, back to him being happy we're there. So my doctor checks things out and thankfully I was at a 4 and some. So not a 3 but a good 4!! I am getting admitted to the hospital. It could not have been a better day to have had Caleb! It takes a while to fill out all the "paperwork" but finally we get to our room probably around 9-9:30.  Meet my nurse, start a round of antibiotics, and get my epidural!! Which is always awesome! My doctor comes in to check on things and notices I have a "bulging bag". I'm like, is that bad? Good? Whaaaat? It just means that when he breaks my water, 1, it's going to be a lot of fluid and 2, labor will go really fast. So, he wants to wait to break my water since I'd only had 1 dose of antibiotics and I need 2 doses. They give me the second dose at 2:30 (a little early) and break my water at 3. My doctor guestimated that we'd have the baby by 3:14 so really quickly. Well, it didn't work exactly as we thought. For some reason, he was sort of stuck? The doctor checked things out a couple times and finally at 5, he wanted me to start pushing. He looked sort of confused while I was pushing and so were some of the nurses. I didn't know why and didn't pay much attention to it. However, I've never had to push as long! I pushed for 36 minutes before he was born. My other kids were between 7 and 15 minutes so I was wondering why I couldn't push this guy out! Well, the answer came while he was coming out. He was forehead first (or as they say in the medical world, brow first. Fancy!). Usually these babies end up c-section babies. My doctor was quiet about it because I was pushing okay and he wanted to see if we'd be able to do this. He came out sunny side up so his cheek got scraped up probably on my pelvic bone. But hey, he did not break it so that was really good! After he came out, I found out I didn't tear at all which makes for a much better recovery and was amazing that I didn't since he came out such a "wide" way.
Anyways, that's the story. And now here are pictures!

This is right after he was born. See how big his forehead was??? Poor guy! Probably had the biggest headache ever! So no cone head but protruding forehead instead.

1st Day of Kindergarten

Landon was VERY excited to start school. He has been asking me most days when he'd be going to school. He was also looking forward to riding the bus. Back in the Springtime, he asked when he was going to go to school. I had told him it's got to get hotter and then when it starts cooling down, it'd be time for school. Well, a couple weeks before school started, I caught him pulling large leaves off a plant. I was upset because there weren't that many leaves on the plant in the first place and it wasn't my plant! I asked him why he would do such a thing to the plant! He told me he was trying to make it colder (because leaves fall off plants during the fall) so that he could go to school. How could you be mad at that? Anyways, finally the first day of school came! He wanted me to take tons of pictures of him doing all the random things from the morning such as eating breakfast, getting in the car, and playing on the playground. He does take the bus now but for the first morning, I drove him. The one and only time that'll happen hopefully!

His teacher Mr. Keelin

His class all lined up ready to go.

Waving goodbye. Wasn't nervous at all. He was sooooo ready!