Happy 1st Birthday to Gabriel!

I cant believe it has been a year, a whole year! This time last year I was sitting in my hospital room with a brand new little baby and Billy was getting called from the Principal about Brayden's behavior- which started the path to where we are now... Now I have a busy 1 yr old constantly trying to escape into the laundry room and splash in the dog water or eat a little dog food (don't worry, I always get him before he eats some lol)...and Brayden is home schooled now. Oh how much can change in a year!

I don't want to make this an excessively long post (although I know it will end up being long anyway hah!), but I would just like to post a little memory from Gabriel's birth day and then post pictures of him from every month the last twelve months. :)

Two days old - home from the hospital:

One month old - Blessing day

Two months old:

My smiley guy - Three months old:

Four months old:

Five months old:

Six months old:

Seven months old:

Tigger Gabriel - 8 months old (that is actually his bath robe!)

Uggh couldn't find another photo, 9 months old - when he got stung/bit by an insect at the boys' soccer game!

Sitting in his jungle room - 10 months old

Found a stray brownie and made a mess - 11 months old

Here is the birthday boy! 12 months old...

So Gabriel's birth was probably the most different out of all of my boys. He sure likes to be different! lol A quick summary, I was having nightly contractions at 38 weeks pregnant (two weeks before my due date) and asked my Dr. to induce me because I worried about having someone there with the boys. The Dr. said she couldn't, unless I was having those nightly contractions again - then to just come in and she'd "help" me along. I had my mom come over and we waited and waited for those constractions so that we could go to the hospital, but nada. We all went to bed and I woke up with a surprise at 2am. My water was breaking on its own! Talk about good timing! I wanted to wait a bit to go to the hospital, like I did with all my boys. Usually I have 5-6 hr labors so I thought I could hang out at home for at least a couple hours. Billy and my mom said NO, they wanted me to go to the hospital right away. My contractions hadn't even started yet.
We were in the car within 15 min and at the hospital in 30 min. The contractions were starting now and quickly. The rest I'm not going to go into detail by detail, although I love sharing my baby delivery stories. :) I will say though, that Gabriel was born at 4:...something AM (bad I can't remember the minutes? LOL). It was only 2 hours from when I woke up until he was born. I am very lucky that I had someone already at the house with the boys and that I listened to Billy and went right away to the hospital.
He was 9 lbs 2 oz and I forget the length (horrible!).

Now onto tonight's birthday party- we celebrated with Gabriel's favorite dinner which is mac n cheese. He had three helpings I think! Then we cleaned up and let him open his present. He had already opened the other present last night. oops. haha He got a little toddler driving wheel electronic toy thing and a playscool busy ball popper. I don't know how much he got to enjoy his new toy because all the big brothers were fighting over playing with the ball popper thing. haha!
Then we had carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. yummm He tried to grab the candle, naturally, and dove right into the cake. He loved his cake and had two helpings of cake also. Yikes! Billy jr didn't quite get what was going on because he kept asking for his birthday too. I thought he wanted cake so I got him a slice and he said "NO! Birthday. Birthday. Birthday" and pointing at the candle. He wanted to blow out the candle too. Instead I sung happy birthday to him and then gave him his cake. He was happy with that. Only one more month until his birthday anyway!

Now we're off to sleep and the house is picked up and quiet...shhhhh

Birthday photos:

Opening his present:

This is fun!

Dad showing him his new toy, as he eats the wrapping paper...

Dad set up the new toy, finally getting to play with it:

Big brothers are faster then he is! Trying to get the candle with no luck:

First bite.."Is this really for ME?"

YUMMY!!!

The aftermath!

 

Taking a deep breath.....

...and we're jumping in headfirst to a big life-changing decision for our family.

Billy and I have decided to homeschool the boys. This has been something that we have considered and discussed since Alex started kindergarten over five years ago. It is not something we're jumping into blind or on an act of frustration. No this is not a sudden decision by any means. This is a decision that has been building and building and building until finally the literal straw broke the camel's back and we realized that it's time. We can no longer just discuss it, we have to act on it.

I spent two weeks of the boys' winter break doing hours of research and soul-searching on what we should do. The more I learned, the more I started to feel that homeschooling is really the best route we can take.  Our concerns of social and academic issues were addressed as I did my research and found that it will actually be BETTER socially and academically to homeschool.

I know it will be hard and no walk in the park. I know it will require a lot of me and there will be a lot of trial and error, especially during the first year. However, I know that failing is not an option and we HAVE to succeed.

I am excited, the boys are excited, and Billy is excited. I have plans in place to keep the boys and myself on track.

For more info and to follow along on our journey, I started a blog especially for our progress and adventures in homeschooling!
http://boysnbooks.blogspot.com/

We can't wait!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year! I marvel at how time flies so fast and how last new years seems just like yesterday, when I was wondering and worrying about what the next year would hold for us.
Thankfully 2009 was a good year! I just hope that 2010 is just as good, maybe even better!

We spent our night tonight eating junkfood, uggh, and watching movies. Alex and Owen are my little night owls - just like me. Brayden can't stay up past 8pm usually but he lasted until 9pm when he finally conked out on the couch. Baby Billy usually stays up late with us too, but he was asleep by 11pm.

At the stroke of midnight we, Billy and I with Alex and Owen - Brayden joined us later, ran outside to yell happy new year. Lady was freaking out because of all the fireworks and providing us with entertainment. Her fur was all fluffed up and she kept barking at every firecracker. She's in the house now, but is still running from window to window growling. She doesn't like all this noise!

Tomorrow will be a nice lazy day. Yay! Billy will be taking the older three boys to go see a movie. I think I'll take a nap..... :)

I hope your New Year's Eve was wonderful and I wish many blessings to everyone in 2010!

Christmas 2009

The most wonderful time of the year is finally here and almost gone. It has been a lot of fun and I'm glad its nearly over. It has been one very long exhausting day.

First I will start by backing up a couple days. We have been so blessed with such a good church community and friends. We've had so many goodies and treats brought to us. Monday we were surprised with Christmas carolers and Santa! All bearing goodies too. Then Tuesday we were surprised again with the young women group bringing us gifts for the boys and us. When Owen opened his (oreo snacks and a western gun and belt set) he said "how did they know this is exactly what I wanted!?". haha Alex and Brayden both loved their gifts as well and baby Billy loved opening his and Gabriel's gifts. haha! Gabriel got a bath set and immediately baby Billy started taking his shirt off saying "help, bath...help, bath..." until I stopped what I was doing and gave him a bath right then! Billy and I also got some gift cards. We appreciated this very much and wanted to send our thanks to the young ladies and the adults who helped them! :)

Christmas Eve I spent most of the day baking because we want to start a new tradition of delivering plates of goodies on Christmas Eve instead of staying at home and focusing on santa and presents. The boys had fun delivering all the goodies. All  my baking only produced enough for nine small plates which we delivered to the families that Billy is assigned to visit every month, so I apologize to those who didn't get a plate of goodies. Next year I plan to make a lot more!

Bedtime finally came and Brayden laid out cookies and milk for Santa. We discovered that we have a new little Santa's helper as Billy and I heard a sudden clatter coming from the area where the cookies were. Notice I said were. Lady, our dog, decided to help herself to Santa's cookies AND drink the milk too. Yep, she tipped over the milk and drank it all up after she ate the cookies. We didn't tell the boys. They just think Santa enjoyed the cookies and milk. :)

It took a while to get the boys to sleep but finally we did and we, errr I mean Santa, set up all the gifts and special Santa gifts (the ones that we set up and are not wrapped).  Ebay was our big life saver this year! We bought most of the boys gifts used on Ebay (saved tons) and if not on Ebay, then we got them discount on Amazon with free shipping. wohoo!
Billy and I realized that we both got eachother new computer chairs and so he brought both of them in the house and put them together. yay!

We finished early, around 10:30pm but decided to relax a little and watch a movie. Bad idea. At midnight we finally went to bed but I wanted to feed Gabriel because for some reason he had refused to nurse when he went to bed. So unlike him. I tried to feed him at midnight but again he was refusing him. At that time it had been 6+ hrs since he last ate. He shouldn't have been refusing to nurse. So I kept trying but it made him more mad. Now I was dealing with a cranky baby at midnight who wouldn't nurse to go back to sleep. uggh Finally I laid him back down and he wimpered a little but went to sleep. It worried me all night though. :( I didn't go to sleep until 2am.
Annnnnnd a couple hours later, 4:30am, the boys woke us up to go open presents. Seriously? We tried to put a movie on for them (we were all sleeping together downstairs since the presents were upstairs) and hold them off until 5am but it didnt work. Finally at 4:45 am we drug ourselves upstairs.

 

 

 

 

The boys were all very excited for their gifts. I was pleased at how well behaved they were being though. They each took turns and no one got impatient waiting for his turn to open a gift. Baby Billy squealed with each gift and demanded I take his picture every time he opened a gift. Gabriel just crawled around getting into his brother's gifts and pulling the wrapping paper out of the garbage box faster then Billy could put it back in. haha

Then we surprised the boys with their big family gift. We weren't planning on getting it but this Christmas season blessed us unexpectedly and our tight budget suddenly had more room even after we decided to share the joy and buy some presents for another family who we knew was also on a tight budget. (And no Joy it was NOT us! haha)   So for the family gift we got a Beatles Rock Band set with Lego Rock Band game. We told the boys they had one more gift but they had to find it. We had wrote a letter with clues that they had to follow to find it.
Once they found it they were SO surprised. They all gave Billy a big hug. :)

 

After presents the boys were off playing so happily and quietly. It was nice. I took a little nap with baby Billy. haha Then it was time to make Christmas dinner. Billy got a prime rib and found a recipe online that he followed. He invited the missionaries from our ward and another ward to have Christmas dinner with us. The prime rib was soooo good! We ended up having another two missionaries come join us for dinner also. But that big prime rib served our whole family and six hungry missionaries! After dinner Alex brought out his new Halo Wars Risk game and the four missionaries left were excited to play Risk with him. I wanted to take a picture but decided against it. Some people dont like their photos on public internet blogs. haha

Then on Saturday after Christmas we drove up to Billy's mom's house for our Christmas with them. It was a lot of fun and the boys had a blast. Billy brought Rock Band and it was a huge hit. We all (well maybe not me lol) played Rock Band for a couple hours! Beki got me this awesome family sign for our house. I think its my favorite present! We already hung it up: (I blocked out our last name for privacy reasons, afterall this is a public blog. But our last name is on the bottom of the sign)

Thanks everyone for the good time and I look forward to next year!

Brayden's piano recital

I've also posted this on Facebook but I know some people who come here do not read my facebook page.

So here is Brayden's first public debut! haha

He did great, although against his teacher's advice he memorized the song. Of course he can read the music too but its faster to memorize it then play along with the notes I guess. Still though I think he did great having only just started playing the piano 5-6 months ago (I can't remember if he started in June or July!), and also that we have no other piano players in the family.

Brayden has always been the type to just get an idea in his head and run with it. I think its a good aspect to have. I wish I was more dedicated to learning new things and putting my mind to things like Brayden does!

Okay here he is....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUv6DXL9MKg

First Snow

The boys are SO excited. I was dozing on the couch while watching a movie with them when I woke up to shrieking, first from Alex, that it was snowing. Then all the boys got into the celebration and I had boys running outside in barefeet, and Owen putting on the first pair of snow boots that he could find so that he could be the first one to run through the snow.
The first thing he did was grab a big handful and EAT it. He told me a month or so ago that he was so excited for it to snow because, "snow is his favorite lunch". hmm? I guess he just loves to EAT snow.
I told him to stay away from the yellow snow... haha

Also I neglected to update and put pictures up but Billy and the boys put up the Christmas tree last weekend. The pictures of the boys decorating the tree are too fuzzy, my flash was not on because the flash washed out the pretty lights. I need to figure out my camera settings better...
But I DID manage to get a picture of all the boys sitting in front of the finished tree. What the picture thankfully didn't show is that immediately after it was taken Alex, Brayden and Owen started hitting each other again and Billy Jr threw Gabriel off his lap. *sigh*.  That's just life in a house of five boys!

We have a lot to be thankful for this year. More and more I'm hearing bad news around us. Suddenly our little issues seem so trivial and we're just thankful to have each other, a roof over our head, food in our bellies, and friends and family all around us.

And now the pictures.....

The boys after decorating the tree and before World War IV (lol)

Alex first discovering the snow. P.s. don't you love his shirt? So true...

The other boys running to the back door to see the snow.

Alex throwing out the first snow ball

Owen the first to run outside in snow boots

A happy Owen with his favorite lunch!

All I want for Christmas....

I just have to brag about my sweet little boys for a moment...

The boys really haven't told me much of what they want this year, except for a few ideas they've casually tossed out. However in the past it seems they've had this one special toy that they couldn't stop talking about and really really wanted.

I'm at a loss for what to get them, although I have a few ideas, and so I asked each of the boys individually what they were really looking forward to this Christmas. I asked them when they think about Christmas, what are they really excited about, or what do they really really want.

I asked Owen first and after a long time of thinking he just said, "I just want my family."

I asked Brayden next, and he said "a hamster!" after two seconds of thinking.

Then I asked Alex later when he got home from school and he thought for a long time too and then said, "I just want to be together with my family".

What sweet boys I have! :)

On a sad note, I've gotten a lot of bad news just within the last week about friends and family. So all I want for Christmas this year is healing and comfort for those who need it.