Starring Amanda Lynn

It is time to post about our sweet Amanda Lynn born 10/10/11 at 12:16 am weighing 8lbs 8 oz. Amanda is getting her first sponge bath in this picture. She is my biggest baby by 7 oz. She was due 10/19/11 and I am so glad that she came early. On Sunday the 9th I finished putting the last of the baby stuff away that I had washed and was heading downstairs to play a game with Nathan at the kitchen table. I walked into the hallway by the kitchen and had a big pain then a spurt of water came out. Preston was sitting in the family room and I said "Uh Preston, I think my water just broke. Call my mom" This was at 6:40 P.M . My brother David showed up at our house to watch the kids until my Mom showed up and Preston and I headed to the hospital. This is all I am going to write about the birth story on here.The kids meeting their baby sister for the first time. I love this picture.Natalie in her Big Sister shirt. She seems so much older now that there is a newborn around.

Five of the people that I Love.

Our whole family.Proof that she did come out with some hair.

I am having issues with this post and the editing so here is the info on the following 5 pictures.

My sister Sherri Lynn holding Amanda Lynn. We couldn't name a daughter using Sherri's first name because of how it sounds with our last name so we decided to pass on the middle name to Amanda. Grandma Jo and Amanda. Preston relaxing at the hospital with Amanda. Aunt Liz and then Aunt Joycelyn when they came to visit at the hospital.

Picture above is Amanda all dressed and ready to leave the hospital.

Amanda in her new car seat. One of the few things that will not be a hand me down in her life. She looks so small in the car seat.

Nana came down Thursday the 13th until Monday the 17th and helped out a TON!!! It worked out well that she had a 4 1/2 day weekend for fall break.

We visited Nana Great and got a 4 generation picture.

Amanda on her due date. SOO CUTE.Taylor does a great job with Amanda. She can often get her to sleep for me. Amanda is usually quite content in her big sister's arms.

Natalie also likes to help with Amanda. She is proud to be a big sister.

Sunday afternoon nap.

Amanda her 1st time at church. She was 2 weeks old. We went to see Nathan and Taylor participate in their primary program.

Miscellaneous Pictures

Here are a few pictures from our old ward. I unfortunately never got a picture of Taylor in her class. I tried twice without any luck. Which is really too bad because she was the one that asked me to take a picture of her class oops.
First of all this is the nursery Natalie was in. It was just one nursery and this was I believe all the kids that are nursery age. We went back to visit a couple weeks ago and Natalie proudly walks in and states " I am 3 and I am tall" When the nursery teachers asked her about her new house she replied "It is tall"

Nathan's primary class. Crazy thing is that his class made up half of the senior primary.

The young women that I had the opportunity to serve for the 2 years prior to us moving.

A few weeks before we moved a couple of my friends threw a surprise going away party for me. It was WONDERFUL!!!! I was completely surprised and felt so loved. I still get a little emotional thinking about it. I truly miss these ladies.


They did an amazing spread of food for the party.

This is Amelia that had the party at her house and made the majority of the yummy food. We were visiting teaching partners for about 4 years. She is a wonderful person and a dear friend.

Well about 3 weeks ago we signed a contract to build a pool at our new house. Then 2 weeks ago this big machine made its way into our backyard. We have a vacant lot next to us so they tore down part of the brick wall and came on in.

It was really a cool thing to watch. We barely made it to school on time this morning. Nathan kept saying "One more dig"

This is what the pool looks like right now. They are putting the shotcrete down tomorrow and it should be done in about 2-3 more weeks. We are putting a heater in it so hopefully it will be done in time so the kids can swim during fall break.

This is an old picture from March 2010 but I wanted to show a little what Nathan's teeth looked like prior to braces. Nathan is very embarrased by this picture but I still think he looks handsome.
Fast forward 15 months after braces and this is what you get. I am very pleased with the results. He looks years older and I am not sure I like that so much but I will survive. We are so glad we put the braces on. It stopped the kids from teasing him at school because of his buck teeth. I knew it was happening but was not aware how much until after he got the braces put on. Nathan never complained about the pain on his teeth and was very good at brushing his teeth often and staying away from foods that would cause them to break. It changed Nathan's confidence level in every aspect of his life. I am glad we did this despite those who ridiculed me for putting braces on an 8 year old. He will likely get them on again for another year when he is 12 but we will cross that bridge when we get there.

Enjoying an apple when we got home. Nathan has always had a major overbite and could never bite into an apple with his front teeth because the teeth didn't connect. Braces helped and he was so excited to not only eat an apple but eat it the normal way. He has had his braces off for 2 weeks now and we have had caramel apples/popcorn/milk duds/ slim jims/ corn on the cob just to name a few.

This is our family with Preston's Nana. She turns 96 in January. She is an amazing lady and loved by many. Her health has dwindled quite a bit in the past couple months but she is a strong woman and determined to keep on going. We all love going to visit Nana.

I had some coupons for a local indoor trampoline play area so I took the kids the end of July. Taylor likes to do flips on the trampolines but I was never fast enough with the camera to actually catch her in the process of the flip. This is the best you get sorry.

Natalie loves to jump on the trampolines.

We also had a coupon for a free jump board so Nathan got to try that out. It was pretty fun for him.

The girls on one of the rides in the lobby.

The first weekend in August was the baby blessing for our newest cousin on Preston's side. These are the 10 cousins on Preston's side. My kids are #3, 5, 7 and the newest baby will be #11. All prime numbers just as a side note to give an example of my quirky number brain.

Natalie is so cute with her babies. She got them all situated for nap time with a pillow and blanket before she laid next to them to go to sleep.The girls love to play dress up and this particular Sunday morning I actually took a couple of pictures. Nathan joined in the fun a little too. He was ordered to be the prince with his pink cape. It makes me chuckle that he is trying to look so tough yet he is wearing a pink cape. :-)

Natalie all dolled up and ready to go.

20 seconds of fame

One of the local news stations came to the kids school a few weeks ago. It is a bit called whirly bird Wednesday. At first they had all the kids and parents on the field making FOX 10 out of bodies. In the beginning the kids all stayed with me but soon after they found their friends and I was an afterthought.

Nathan is waving to the helicopter. You can actually see him during the broadcast clip.

Taylor was also excitedly waving at the helicopter.

Natalie was more annoyed with the noise of the helicopter.

Our 4th Child

So finally a post about me being pregnant with our 4th child. This pregnancy for the most part has been pretty good and uneventful. We at least the first 7 1/2 months were. I am very grateful that things are going pretty smoothly amid all the other chaos in our life the past several months. The pregnancy has flown by. My due date is October 19th and it is another girl. I have to admit I never imagined having 2 daughters much less imagining 3 daughters. It will be fun.
For history sake I am going to post about finding out the gender of this 4th child. It is kind of a long story but here it goes. We debated for weeks on if we would find out the gender or let it be a surprise on delivery day. I really wanted to wait but realistically wasn't sure I could do it. I am too much of a planner. The day of the ultrasound came and we had decided to have the technician determine the gender and right it on a piece of paper put it in an envelope and give it to Preston who would put it in our safe at home until the day we (I) decided to find out. During the actual ultrasound we closed our eyes during the time she was observing gender area. Ultrasound was finished and the tech hands ME two CD envelopes. I put them in the bag and go to the restroom. Preston goes out into the waiting room with the kids. While Preston is taking Natalie to the restroom I decide to look at the ultrasound pictures that I was handed. (Every other time I have had an ultrasound with this practice they give me a disk of all the pictures and some printouts) So I pull out the pictures from the unsealed envelope that the technician handed to ME and after the first picture is a post it note that has GIRL written on it. I am SHOCKED to say the least that I just saw what I did and that it did indeed say GIRL. I shove the picture and paper back in the envelope and try to convince myself that I did not just see the gender while sitting alone in the waiting room. So not how I planned to find out what our 4th child's gender was. But I couldn't undo what happened and so I confessed to Preston that I knew. I decided that to make it special for the rest of the family at least I would go buy girl things at the store and wrap them up for the kids and Preston to open and reveal what gender the baby was. So here they are waiting for their presents.

Revealing their presents. Preston was a little shocked. Judging by my behavior he really thought it was a boy. Nathan and Taylor (mostly Nathan) were disappointed to not be getting a little brother. It was a shock to us all but overall we are all just very happy that she is healthy and well and are excited to have her join our family. We joked before we found out that no matter what the gender we knew what the baby would look like since we seem to have only one mold for our kids. What do you expect when the gene pool is a gene pond. :-)

I have only taken 2 pregnancy pictures. Like I said before this pregnancy is flying by amid all the chaos. I am 24 weeks in this picture.

34 weeks. Most people are shocked when they here how far along I am. This is one of the advantages of being 6 feet tall that my mom always told me about when I was so annoyed with towering over all the boys through most of my school years.