She made it!

Welcome Miss Lexi Israelsen to the world!

We got to the hospital for the induction at 4:00 a.m. on Thursday and she made her grand debut at 4:51 p.m.  It was a long day full of all sorts of little surprises.  The greatest surprise of all being our little girl tipping the scale at.....

.......9 pounds 4 ounces!  21 inches.  Future linebacker.  No wonder I was so blasted uncomfortable.

I have so much I could write about but the words are a bit blurry as I write.  Exhaustion is a great descriptor for the moment.  As well as sheer elation.  We are all absolutely in love with our new little sister.



Hence the exhaustion:

Seriously, after 12 hours, 2 IV's, 2 epidurals (the latter to the rescue literally without a minute to spare) I am looking like Miss America I think!  He he he.

Out of order, but oh well.  The girls were so excited to come help Dad pick up Mom and Lexi from the hospital.

Our new little toddler:

Hopefully more to come.  For now we'll endure a bit of time keeping her on the bilibed lights.  And of course endure random, unexpected moments of hormonal eruptions from my eyeballs.  But, as we tell the girls, they are definitely happy tears.

Moments

I snagged this completely impromptu picture of Allie the other day.  Something about it makes me smile one of those deep down everything-in-life-is-perfect-for-just-this-one-moment smiles.  I just had to share.

Can't believe we are so close to having another little girl join our family.  Looking forward to another everything-in-life-is-perfect-for-just-this-one-moment smile when we finally see her for the first time.

And then become a zombie for the next.....oh.....4 months.

Jump!

This blog has had a severe lack of pictures lately.  Let's be honest, a blog without pictures is pretty much boring.  So here is a bit of what we've been up to:

Despite being 38 weeks and 2 days pregnant (yet feeling like I am 83 weeks and 365 days pregnant), I am really trying to be a fun mom.  Mostly I'm not, but every once in a while there is a silver lining in the fun mom department for my little crew.  Here they are out enjoying the Hello Kitty sprinkler.  Water is so much more fun with a white little kitty to spin around with:

Kenna loves to come up with all sorts of maneuvers to do.

Ty's not so much a fan of the water, but this boy LOVES to jump.  He has a good one, maybe two, inches of clearance there.  He's Olympic bound.

And Allie pretty much thinks she is an all-star for getting her face a little bit wet.  

And of course don't forget every young child's desire to let our their inner entrepreneur.  My girls were no exception the other day as they decided to hit the side of the road to sell "treats."  Bless their little hearts, they tried so hard.  They made signs and everything.  Blame it on the economy- they didn't sell any.  They were bummed.  But way to give it a whirl ladies! 

The girls:

The loot:

The sign (thanks to a makeover of a preschool project of Allie's):

And speaking of preschool, last night we enjoyed Allie's little Spring Program for preschool.  It was cute and she was so excited for us to come.  (And of course the pictures aren't uploading for me.) 

Hopefully soon we can add some pictures of the newest member of our family.  We are getting excited.  And I admit along with that is some nervousness and anxiety.  We are scheduled to be induced the 24th but she is MORE than welcome to make her debut anytime.

And just for a whole lot of fun, I got a nice shot of my shadow the other day.  You gotta love my sources of entertainment.  Ya, that's me.  Ha!  Not to be confused with Shamu.

Ta ta for now, I guess!

Eight is GREAT!

Yesterday Jacob and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary!  Hooray for us!  It was pretty much business as usual.  But I absolutely loved sitting in Sacrament Meeting watching him conduct and bear his testimony.  One thing I know for sure, I am one lucky woman.  One blessed woman.

Seeing as though we have 3 young ones and a new one coming rather soon, we flew low on the celebrations. We got a babysitter Saturday night to really party it up with dinner and running a few errands.  On the way home I got serious and told him I had a major confession.  I let him squirm for a minute then told him I was really embarrassed because I didn't even get him a gift.  I didn't even get him a card to write sweet nothings in.  He just threw his head back and laughed his great laugh.  Basically it would have never even occurred to him that I didn't.  

So as I was thinking about our weekend, I came to the conclusion that we don't need stuff all the time, something for every single occasion.  The best gift sometimes is to just be together.  We don't have to have anything major.  In the chaos of life and the demands that try to pull us away from each other, one of my favorite "gifts" is time with him to simply sit on the couch and laugh.  Granted, we both have moments of pining for another cruise together, but that is waaaaaaay down the road.  For now, I am so grateful that I just simply enjoy being with my husband.  My other half.  My best friend.  It sounds so cliche, but really, those phrases just fit perfectly.

Thank you Jacob for our 8 years.  Amazing to think we really are still just getting started.  But really, it just keeps getting better.

I love you.

Trucking Along

35 weeks and 4 days.  But who's counting?

Um.  ME.  I feel it.  I feel large.  I feel akward.  I need to sit down.  Lots.  I try avoid bending over if at all possible.  But then again I have a 22 month-old so my efforts often prove in vain.  Thank heavens he still has a really good nap every afternoon.  It is becoming my salvation.  Oh wait.  I have two other children.  Those poor girls are probably feeling so neglected.  I really am not a fun mom lately.  I try, really I do.  But this wee one who likes to roll her wee little body all around inside my not-so-wee body is becoming pretty much all-consuming.  Did I really do this 3 times before? 

I think I can, I think I can....

I really need to blog about our past two weekends.  Weekend 1 we LOVED having Grandma and Grandpa Israelsen come down for a visit.  The time went entirely too fast.  As always we were sad to see them head home.  And I am incredibly ashamed to say I didn't take a single picture.  Not a one!  Pathetic.  Grandpa and Dad got a good start on the girls' fort out back.  Grandma spent a large majority of her time reading and playing games with two little girls who ate up every bit of her love and attention.  And I of course had someone help do dishes and let me take a beautiful nap. 

Weekend 2 we got to see Aunt Connie and Aunt Marlene while they spent some time down in St. George.  We love having family!  Seeing as though it's a good 4-5 hour trip, we feel pretty special when family stops in for a visit.

I am pretty certain there are other things I'm forgetting.  My brain is only semi-functional.  That's better than completely non-functional, right?  The cup is half full!  Just like the constant state of my bladder.

The Ranch Hand

A quick clip of Ty Man the Ranch Hand:

Complications

No, I'm not having complications with my pregnancy. Rather, pregnancy became the complication.

Let me explain.

I got the flu last Thursday. Yes, the flu. Horrible, nasty. Yucka from the top of my belly to the very bottom. So what happens when you have a baby in between it all? MISERY. Sheer misery. My stomach, I'm afraid, is stuck somewhere up in my ribs. Everything else is pushed way down down down to the other end. So when the top is smooshed and churning, and the bottom is smooshed and churning, the very last thing you want is for a baby to be in the middle to use it all as a punching bag. Oh, the horror. The only good thing about it was that it lasted less than 48 hours. Otherwise I'm quite sure I wouldn't be alive to even blog about it. Thank you THANK YOU my dear husband for taking yet another day off of work to take care of me. I never did blog about throwing my back out a few weeks ago.....I'm falling apart!

Well, I got everything all washed and cleaned and was looking forward to having a Sunday with my husband home for the WHOLE DAY. The whole day! No meetings! Sundays are one of our busiest days of the week, so it was a sweet little nugget of goodness I wanted to love every minute of. Just a nice Sunday to relax and enjoy General Conference together.

I was really looking forward to this.

That was until about 5:45 Sunday morning when my poor Jacob came down with the same bug. Oh for crying out loud! Is there no rest for the weary!

Nope.

Poor guy. It was merciless. At least by Sunday evening he was doing much better.

General Conference. Alone. With 3 kids. I deserve a medal. A gold medal. I even listened to it. And so did my girls! Do you know what that means? You should believe in angels, because I sure do.

And good riddance to last weekend. May I NEVER have the flu being complicated with pregnancy again.

Oh, and be VERY glad I have no pictures to post on this one.

He he he.