Christmas

Christmas just seems to get better and better every year. It is hard to believe how much life has changed in just one year.  I am so grateful that "Baby Boo" is here to celebrate his very first Christmas, what a sweet and precious blessing! 

The kids were super patient with us this year and while they were up early they let us sleep in until around 8 because they know the nights are a bit long these days! The morning started off with stockings!

I definitely had one of those moments, which I am sure is often the case on Christmas morning for parents where I looked into the living room and was just awe struck that this is my life.  I have this big ole busy house of kids that I get to celebrate Christmas morning with.  I just felt so very blessed! This is everything I could have hoped for in life and I just can't believe all my dreams have come true! 

Ayla is already learning the ropes of lefsa making

Malachi has learned the art of baby holding and he is just the sweetest big brother to this baby! 

Someone was full of smiles  for his entire first Christmas!  

Homemade pretzels and meatballs are becoming a tradition!

It was a great day of food and kids scattering their new toys all over the house, what more could we ask for!

 We went to bed with fresh snow falling (a rarity for where we live) and completely exhausted but content with another Christmas in the books. We know we have a limited amount of years where we get to celebrate the magic of Christmas with our little ones and we aren't taking a second of it for granted!  

Malachi's 11th Birthday

Still playing catch up. Back in April our oldest kid turned 11.  The years really do fly by because I swear he was just my adorable little chatty toddler.  Malachi is growing up into a young man and he is just all around a very fun person to spend time with!  He makes me laugh, he loves to talk about and watch sports. He is so kind and helpful.  He is that kid that looks for ways to help out and sometimes does what you're going to ask before you even have the chance to ask.  He is the perfect big brother, he cares for and looks out for all of his siblings, especially the babies!  I could not have hoped for a better 1st born child!  

For his Birthday he asked for strawberry waffles and a seafood feast.  He is also our most adventurous eater and it is always fun to see him try new things!  

 

Following the sports loving theme, we had to have a sports themed birthday party!

Malachi, you are the most amazing kid and have been since the day I first laid eyes on you! The years have gone far too fast but I have also learned that big kids can be just as fun as babies!  I love the conversations we have, I love the jokes you make, I love that we can watch sports together, or that you're patient enough to teach me and want me to play football with you!  You are an incredible big brother and I am so thankful that God brought you into our family to lead the way. I cannot wait to see what these new "tween" years bring and watch you continue to grow into a young man and see what passions you have in life and where life will take you. I know amazing things are coming your way and I can't wait to sit on the sidelines and cheer you on!  

 

Bathroom Renovation

I am mostly caught up on posts in real time, but now that I have had some time to work on pictures and such I wanted to go back and keep trying to catch up on other posts from this year. 

Our house is from the 80's and we have slowly been chipping away at projects as we could afford to.  One of the bigger rooms that needed a major update was our master bathroom.  We have put it off because of the cost but as plumbing started going bad we decided to get it done as soon as we could manage.  We knew this was going to be a huge undertaking and spent months trying to forge a plan.  

2 days before the project began, the giant dumpster was on its way, we had a tub and vanity in our garage and numerous other supplies ready and waiting, this happened:

We were happy and thought it was so funny but also with this being the 4th time I was going to be doing this, I knew within a week or so that I would be feeling awful.  The idea of a major remodel (that forced us to move out of our room) and me knowing I was going to need some extra help from Peter with the kids really made us question if we could handle this project.  But since we already had it so set in motion, we knew we had to press on! 

Here are some "before" pictures of this project. This project also affected our master bedroom because we were adding a solid wall to the left walk through so we could make a big master closet. 

Where the glass closet doors are would become our walk in closet, we would be removing the giant bathtub and putting in a much smaller, more practical one. 

The wall between the tub and very small shower would be completely removed so we could make a much larger shower.  My main requests were a nice walk in closet, an awesome soaking tub, and a much bigger shower. And Peter sure provided on all of those! 

We all had a blast with demolition

New walls for the walk in closet

We also made a normal doorway on the other side

Flooring

New vanity and a ton of bright lighting in a room that did not have adequate lighting prior

Finishing touches and a massive shower 

The project of course took twice as long as we expected and had those usual unexpected things come up.  We also had some higher than expected expenses with the glass for the shower and putting up new siding on the entire front of the house (it needed it) because of removing a window in the bathroom.

But the finished project was so beautiful! 

Some before and afters: I was not able to be as helpful as I would have liked with this project because I was so sick but Peter knocked it out of the park! 

 

Leeland 2 Months

Well, here we are with our little baby already growing up so fast!  Leeland is 2 months old and we are loving this little addition to the crew! It still takes me a minute sometimes to realize that I have 6 kids, counting kids in the car can sometimes take me a minute! 

Leeland is a perfect little blessing!  He is a whopping 12 lbs already and we just love all the chub!  The best part of this month is how he smiles!  I love watching him interact with his big siblings! All in all things are going well, I got my wish and the little guy loves to be snuggled all the time!  He thinks he's bigger than he is and tries to rollover from his back to his stomach but can't quite get there from his side just yet.  I don't want him to grow up too fast so he needs to slow his roll! 

Our biggest challenge is night time sleep. Much like Ayla, this guy would prefer to sleep all day and play all night.  We are doing what we can to try and help him get things straightened out but we know it might just take some time.  When he does get to sleep he generally gives us a 3-5 hour stretch of sleep, but we've had a lucky couple nights where he's gone as far as 7 or 8 hours!  He's obviously growing and chunking up so we don't have much to worry about with his eating but nursing is going really great (stick THAT to the lactation consultant Peter overheard saying that we were going to fail) and he eats pretty regularly in about 3 hour intervals.

We are definitely approaching our favorite "baby months".  There's something sweet and special about the transitional months where they know who you are and interact with you but aren't busy moving and exploring.  We are looking forward to celebrating his very first Christmas! A little baby around the holidays makes them that much more magical!  We just have to pinch ourselves because adding this little guy has just brought that much more joy into our lives.  I can't believe all my dreams have come true and I have this big ole adorable family to love! 

I thought it might be fun to look back on some of the gender old wives tales now that we know who this little one is and see if they were correct:

Carrying low: Boy 
This was probably the biggest thing that made me think boy.  Both of my boys I carried very low and my girls very high. Also interestingly, I went into labor with both of my boys before 39 weeks and both of my girls were inductions after 39 weeks.

Better skin: Boy

I have notoriously bad skin to begin with but I did have better skin this pregnancy and in general I had better skin with my boys and worse acne with my girls. I could see there being something to the hormones here.

Body running hot: Girl

In general I feel hot when pregnant lol

Fast heart rate: Girl

I thought there was something to this one but the heart rate was high all along. This was the biggest reason I thought maybe baby was a girl.  

Craving salty foods instead of sweets: Boy

I didn't really have a lot of cravings this pregnancy because I felt pretty awful the whole time but I did not really want sweets.

Chinese Gender Chart: Boy

Morning Sickness: Girl

I was sick pretty much the entire pregnancy so this was definitely wrong

Baby Leeland,  We are enjoying you so much. I love love love how snuggly you are. I sometimes lament that I can't accomplish much but I know you won't be this snuggly baby forever so I try to enjoy every second that you want to sleep on my chest.  You have the cutest little crooked smile that melts my heart into a thousand pieces. You have the saddest little pouty lip and you can get whatever you could ever desire from mommy if you keep that up!  You are just the most perfect gift I could have received this year and we all adore you! You are so loved! 

 

Hopes for 2022

I don't know about you, but 2021 sure feels like it zoomed right on by. Do I say that every year? It was another odd year and I think we all might be a bit leery looking into 2022.   My word for 2021 was "Growth". I had very specific areas in life that I wanted to grow in and yet it didn't quite turn out the way I expected. I definitely did grow (figuratively and physically) but it was just different than I was originally thinking.  It was a year of some amazing highs and some really tough lows, but we made it through!  

As I look ahead to 2022, I think of "moments".  These last two years have taught me I can't necessarily plan how life is going to turn out, and that is okay. For someone who loves to have a plan, that has been a slow lesson to learn. But I think I have made peace with that and I am okay just thriving and living in the moment. I look forward to a year full of moments enjoying this family of ours, what a blessing to have these 6 children! I hope we get to travel and create special memories together. We look to the year ahead with very few plans set in place but many chances to make the most in the moments that will come!

Spiritually:

Spiritually I want to continue to cultivate a personal relationship with God.  I always want to grow in my understanding of the Bible which means I need to spend more and more time in the word.  One of my greatest goals now as a parent of 6 children is to help them know how much God loves them unconditionally. I hope they love God and love other people above any other goals.  We look forward to (hopefully) getting back to a normal church routine soon, we really miss attending church regularly.  The kids love their Bible studies and we want them to be able to attend again asap too.  We are just very ready after 2 years of virtual church to plant roots again.  We also hope that by continuing to study the Bible as a family, going chapter by chapter that we can cultivate a knowledge and love for The Word in them too.  

Marriage:  

Our marriage often takes a back seat to the rest of life. Not because we want that at all, just because life seems to move at such a pace that we literally don't have time! Between work, 6 kids, and just day to day being busy it has been really hard to prioritize marriage.  However, we check in often and we both feel like we are in a good place even if life gets in the way. We are communicating better than ever and just enjoying marriage during the little moments we have uninterrupted. We are in a really good and happy place! We celebrated 15 years of marriage this year and really can't wait to have more time together and we know that means we are going to have to find a way to make that happen. We joke that it won't  be long now before we will have built in babysitters and then we can date each other all the time! For this year,  I am hopeful that we can get out on at least some dates and really just have some fun together, talk without interruption here and there and eventually get the baby on a schedule so we can have a few hours to ourselves each day. We are definitely on the right path, just need to keep tending to it to make it the best it possibly can be! 

Family Life

I am so proud of this family of ours. We truly have amazing kids!  They have rolled with lots of hard punches and just keep on keeping on. We hoped to travel this past year but didn't quite get to very much because of pregnancy and this darn bug still going around.  We did get some local trips in though to our favorite places and any chance big or small to get away is a blast! We obviously added a new member to this family unit this year and these kids have been amazing in the adjustment, so patient, so loving and adoring towards him! They love having baby siblings and even ask for more! There is so much I look forward to doing with the kids in the new year. They are primarily the reason for my desire to enjoy the moments this year!  We have had a great opportunity through the pandemic to really tighten up as a family unit and simplify life. I do hope that things can loosen up a bit more in the new year so the kids can get back to some of their favorite things, but I love the time we have had in working on relationships inside our own home!  

Finances:   

This last year has propelled us forward in some pretty amazing ways and for that I am so thankful!  We didn't travel so we were able to do a ton of house renovation projects. But the biggest news of all, 13 years ago we started our Total Money Makeover. We were young newlyweds who wanted to be weird: thrive on one income and have a big family!  We have sacrificed here and there to make our dreams come true but through dedication and hard work we are blown away at the fact that we now have the cash in hand to pay off our house and hit Baby Step #7.  This will be such a blessing for our family.  God also blew us away in some circumstances that led Peter to accepting a new job that he will be starting in the new year!  I have to brag on this guy for a moment. He has a unique skill set that had the start ups circling like sharks! He was booked up solid with interviews, multiple competitive job offers and a massive blessing of a fully remote job leading the tax function for another up and coming tech company! Best of all he is super excited about this new opportunity and that makes me happy! We are entering a new territory with Baby Step 7 where we have the freedom to do whatever we want, but we still plan to follow Dave's advice - have some fun, invest for our future, and give more generously than ever!

Home:  

We really invested in the house this last year. A completely renovated master bath and bedroom. New windows, siding, and paint on the front of the house, an office renovation for Peter and the girls are getting a refresh in a new bigger room too! We aren't 100% sure how far we will get with projects this year but we would like to continue to replace the siding and windows around the house and hopefully get a complete remodel of the stairway in the house, upgrading to a modern look from the 80's look it currently has.  I am really feeling the itch recently (thank you HGTV) to just paint and lighten up the house. That is a big project we might not get to this year, but I guess you never know!  

Personal Health:  

I made some awesome progress in this department last year. I hired a personal trainer and learned so much that I can carry on into the new year amidst this post partum period.  I am still giving myself lots of grace as it was recommended that I wait to start working out until I am 3 months post partum but I can't wait to get back at it! Even though I spent most of last year pregnant and didn't meet my ultimate goal (but new baby was completely worth it!) I am confident that I can take everything I learned and get to where I want to be. I am already well on my way to getting back to where I was before baby and then will just continue the journey from there!

Vacations:  

We didn't get to do any of the things we hoped to do in 2021 but that is okay.  We still went away to the beach a few times, our happy place in Eagle Crest, and a special little hotel we love for our 15th Anniversary.  I have no idea what the entire year of travel will look like but for now, we do have a couple local trips planned to enjoy some snow and get the kids back on the mountain for skiing. The boys will continue to work on their skills while we also get Sabrina on ski's for the very first time!  

 The last few years have looked nothing like I thought they would when they started. I certainly had no idea we would be adding precious Leeland to the family or that Peter would be starting a new job.  It was a hard year in soooo many ways, we faced a ton of challenges but we kept at it and we are better for it!  I always hope for an amazing year ahead but I know that no matter what, we will be okay as long as we keep trusting God!  I sit here just counting every single blessing I have been given. We do not deserve any of what we have but I am so, so thankful for this life I have been given! I do not need to worry because God has this. No matter what, He never fails!  

 

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Ayla's 2nd Birthday

Ayla is already a big 2 year old!  Wow!  We still couldn't celebrate as big as we would have liked but we had an awesome and fun day with our girl regardless!

She loved waking up to her birthday balloons! 

And donuts 

She did not like us singing "Happy Birthday" at all but she LOVED her candle and we let her blow it out several times because why not? It was her day! 

We took her out to lunch and to the toy store.  We would have done more but that wore our girl out.  We aren't used to nap schedules and birthday days anymore so we forgot to factor that into the plans - whoops!  But someone was dancing for her yummy lunch! 

And then it was cake time! She could not have loved her Minnie cake anymore! 

The cutest part is that she added more decorations to it! 

It was a wonderful day for the Birthday Girl! 

Baby Girl, you have brought so much joy into our family! You have spent most of your life in the midst of a pandemic and you arrived just when we needed that boost of joy in a hard world! You are so fun and so happy and make us all laugh and smile! You have wrapped every single person who knows you tightly around their finger!  You are smart and talk all the time, you have strong opinions and know what you want and are determined to figure out how to get it. You are busy and constantly moving!  We just feel so blessed to have you in our lives and have enjoyed every second of these last 2 years with you.  We can't wait to watch you grow even more and talk and learn so much in this year ahead! We love you so very much! 

 

Leeland 1 Month

Leeland is now a whole month old. How time already flies! Newborn phase is such a strange time of wanting to soak in every single second in slow motion and feeling so tired and overwhelmed that you want life to speed up so you can find that new normal!   

I sometimes have to pinch myself to realize that we indeed had another little boy!  I didn't have a strong guess either way but I ended up feeling really surprised that it was a boy! Now that he is here, I just can't imagine our family being anymore perfect than it is. I couldn't have written a better story if I tried with our 3 sons and 3 daughters! 

We are learning more and more about our little man! He loves to snuggle and pretty much wants to snuggle all day long! I might be able to get him down for one nap each day where he sleeps without being held, but otherwise it seems like a continuous phase of tag teaming our snuggly boy.  He has no chill when it comes time to eat and as soon as he is hungry, he lets us all know! He generally takes a long time to get to sleep, like over an hour of fighting it but once he is asleep we get really good naps out of him!  At night he has been going 3-5 hours, the last few nights he has only woken up once during the night and that has been a treat! The best part is that he is becoming more and more alert and loves when we talk or sing to him.  He does smile sometimes at us (he has an adorable crooked smile!) and I know that it won't be long and we will know for sure that he is smiling at us!  He is starting to figure life out and we are starting to figure him out!    

Feeding is going well.  Considering he went from not even wanting to drink a bottle in the NICU, to drinking a bottle and then getting him to figure out nursing, he has been a champ!  I'm super proud of how well he has handled all the adjustments that life has thrown at him from the NICU to home. I already have over 800 ounces in the freezer and I know how important that stash is when my supply tanks in the later months so I am grateful that my supply is never a problem at the beginning!  This sweet boy has chunked up past a whopping 10 lbs already so he is eating well! He still fits in some newborn but is starting to transition to 0-3 month clothes and size 1 diapers.  He has the biggest cheeks and cutest double chin already! I can't wait to see how chunky he is in a couple months! 

We are still adjusting considering we have 6 kids at home, I would say this is probably one of our harder transition periods, likely because we have 4 busy kids who keep us on the move and then a toddler and a newborn.  The first 4 days were exhausting with pretty much no sleep with the NICU. The next 2 weeks went by in a flash of exhaustion and adjusting.  Peter went back to work at that point and the first week back was definitely a transition. I was very, very tired that first week back to work.  This 2nd week of Peter working has gone much better, still tired but overall feeling much better and getting into a little bit of a routine. When he sleeps I have been able to organize some things around the house that were neglected over the last 9 months and also start getting my steps back up! Still not ready to get back into a workout routine but I would like to get back to walking if my body will allow!  

Post partum has been a bit of a journey but the worst should be over! Pregnancy was so rough that my mind is ready to do a lot more than my body will allow.  My body kind of yells at me when I overdue it. Extreme fatigue is taking a long time to pass, it seems worse than just normal baby keeping me up at night but it is slowly getting better. I'm sure I should probably be taking a blood builder or something because I'm sure my blood levels are low. Otherwise I've still had a bit of lingering pelvis pain but even that is getting much better!  I can't wait to get more active but I am reminding myself to listen to what my body is saying so little by little I'll get there. Go figure that recovery seems to take a bit longer after each pregnancy too! 

Emotionally post partum has gone pretty well. It has been an insane month of highs and lows.  It may  I have read it is normal to need to process a precipitous labor plus the fact that I was diverted to a different hospital with a different doctor and baby having to be transported so I am still working through those emotions. There has just been so much that has happened beyond what I could even write down this first month but in the end I am just so thankful he is here and healthy and thriving! I have recently learned that my placenta was below the 10% for size and there was a whole long list of problems with it that could have caused a late term stillbirth so I just feel so blessed in knowing that he is here and he is okay! 

Mr Leeland, what a delight you are to us!  My heart is so full of love for you, our newest addition! I just have to pinch myself because I feel so fortunate that you are ours!  It was a long, hard, surprise pregnancy but I just could not have written a better story than the addition of you into our lives. I will never forget how we just laughed when we discovered you were on your way.  How at your 9 week ultrasound you already had fingers and toes and were waving at us! How polite your little kicks felt.  How you were trying to suck on your toes at your 30 week 3D ultrasound.  How you entered this world fast and furious and those first moments of meeting you!  We waited in so much anticipation for you to join us and we just love you so much already! I cannot help but believe you have an important purpose and that you came to this earth for such a time as this!  You are already so amazing!