Called To Serve, Y'all

Giddy up!  

My parents have officially been called to serve in the Fort Worth, Texas Mission.

HOORAY for Elder and Sister Otte!  

Will I miss them?  Yes.  Much.

Will I survive without them?  It's questionable, but probably.

Will they be amazing missionaries?  Absolutely.

So excited for you and your upcoming adventure Mom and Dad!

As of Late.....

2 weeks and we're still alive!  We certainly got off to a bit of a wild start.  But hopefully, maybe sorta kinda, we are somewhat starting to come around...ish. 

Here is a look at our past week two weeks:

A few days before Lexi was born, Kenna managed to get a cold.  About the day before Lexi was born, Kenna started to lose her voice and was having a bit of a hard time breathing.  By Friday (when I was still in the hospital), it was obvious she wasn't getting better so my angel mother toted her and the 2 other chillins into the Doctor's office.  The Doc diagnosed her with croup and prescribed a steroid pill.


Speaking of angel mother.... I really could not have survived the first few days without her.  She did laundry, cooked, cleaned, spoiled, hugged, kissed, loved, and let me cry all I wanted.  Oh I could have kept her for another 6 months!  I LOVE LOVE YOU MOM!  A thank you doesn't even come close.  And notice Kenna in the back wearing a mask.  Poor little lady.

In the meantime, we came home with little Lexi.  She is absolutely lovable, and huggable, and kissable.  Ty especially loves to give his sis some kisses.  For the most part he is actually really soft with her.  And of course baby equipment is always much more fun when you are way too big for it:

  

So by the Monday night after we got home from the hospital (Memorial Day), the steroid Kenna was given was obviously not working and she was really sucking in to try to breath.  My angel mother and I loaded her up (with Lexi in tow) and headed to the Instacare.  Of course the Instacare was closed, so we then headed to the ER.  The ER on a holiday.  Ya, love it.  To sum it up, we got there at about 7:45ish and left at about 2:00ish.  2:00ish in the morning.  Yes, that is over 6 hours in the ER.  The majority of the time spent sitting and waiting.  And feeding a baby 3 times.  And crying when after the breathing treatment I thought we were all done and finding out we had at least another 2 hours so she could breath in the cool mist saline.  Mind you we had already been there for at least 3 hours by that point.  It was all I could do to keep it together for my poor Kenna's sake.  I don't know how many nurses gave me the look of insanity when they found out I was in the ER with a 4-day-old.  What do you do?  Stuck between 2 of my babies.  I did what most mom's would do.  I will forever remember my dear, sweet, wonderful, amazing mother standing next to Kenna for 2 hours holding that tube up to her mouth for her to breath in the mist.  I truly could not have done it without her.  Being a mom just reinforces my need to still have a mom!  And am I ever grateful for the one I have.  Beyond grateful.  It was a loooonng night.  One I wish never to repeat.  But thank heavens it's all over and said and done and Kenna is doing well.

Here is how Kenna felt about being sick and having to stay away from Lexi: 

 

And here is how Allie feels about holding Lexi:

She also is a great help when Ty decides he gets mad that Mom can't help him right away.  E for effort, Allie!

My dad was able to come down for Memorial weekend, and once again I loved it!  That man can whip up a mean Sunday dinner (complete with homemade apple pie) and have it cleaned up before you can blink.  I'm still trying to figure out how to recruit him to come down every Sunday.  My parents are just downright amazing, what can I say?  Ty man especially loved his Grandpa.  What little boy wouldn't love another man to rough and tumble with?  Here they are playing with a little brush the girls had that popped in and out.  He just thought it was hilarious!

 

But of course it's been all about a cute little lady in the house.  It is amazing how much a new little spirit adds to the home.  I think we all are smitten with our new little addition and can feel she is still so close to heaven.  Here I caught the tail end of a sleep smile.  Oh how I love newborn sleep smiles!

After her first bath.  I think we can all agree there is nothing quite like a new baby fresh out of the tub.

Can't believe she's been here 2 weeks!  It's going too fast!  Thank you for adding a new little piece of  heaven to our home Miss Lexi.  

 

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.