Chase's Blessing

On May 5th we blessed baby Chase.  It was a little hectic for me because I knew all of my family would be coming up and I was really excited.  However, it causes me to stress a bit to make sure everything was in order.  But thanks to my amazingly clean and hard working husband, we got the house ready to go! He even fixed 5 feet of shattered sprinkler line the day before! (Good initiation to home ownership I guess :)

But once all the family got up here it wasn't that crazy.  I didn't have anything special picked out for him as far as outfits go.  I was just going to do a white button up onesie and a bow-tie.  But my mom reminded me of the tux my little brother was blessed in and I just couldn't pass it up.  He looks like such a stud in his tux :).  I wasn't sure that it was going to fit that great because it was a 6 month size (My brother was a big baby!) But it fit him great! He is apparently bigger than I thought. Danny did an amazing job on his blessing and I'm so proud of him.

For dinner we served Cafe Rio pork salads which I thought was a great hit! Just put the meat in a crockpot and get the fixings for the salad and we were good to go! However, there's no way I could have done it without the help of my sisters and mom :)

First family photo! We're kinda slacking in that category...

Oh how I love him!

Chase Daniel

This is a really long post....

The Kendalls are now a family of 5 (including Sadie, our dog) !  Well, we were about 2 and a half weeks ago :)  It was quite the process to get him here.  He really didn't want to come. 
With this pregnancy, I had decided to be induced for many reasons.  First, I now live in Heber City, but I work in Orem.  About a 25 minute commute.  I really didn't want to have to drive myself to the hospital or have to deliver down in Orem.  I also did not want to risk my water breaking while I was teaching.  And then I thought that If i could plan when to have him, it would make my sub-plan planning easier and take a bit of the unknown out of the equation.  I was already feeling anxious about not knowing when it was going to happen, and if I should keep working that I just wanted it all planned out. 
So we planned to have me induced on Wednesday, February 27th.  I decided to take that Monday and Tuesday off beforehand so I could have some time to make sure the house was ready and spend some time with Danny and Ashlynn.  My principal had no problem with it.  Well, the 27th came, we went to the hospital and started the pitocin. Up to this point, I was already dilated to a three, however I was really posterior (which meant my cervix was really far back)  So, they started the pit. and I had started having regular 3-5 min. contractions.  they then increased my pitocin by 2 ml. every half hour.  I had consistent regular contractions but they weren't any more painful than I had had on my own up to this point.  12;00 comes, Dr. checks me, no change! 2:30 comes...Dr. Checks, no change! 5:00 comes Dr. Checks and still NO CHANGE! He couldn't break my water because my cervix was still too far back that he wouldn't have been able to get the hook in.
I was feeling quite frustrated to this point as was Danny.  So do you know what they do to people who have contractions but don't dilate?? yep they send you home! Sooo we went home with no baby.  Had you ever heard of an induction not working? me neither.  But apparently it happens. No matter how much I wanted him to come, He wasn't budging.
Dr. told me I shouldn't go back to work because now that I've started the process I could go any time.  And another fear we were having is that I was in Labor for about 2 hours with Ashlynn.  I deliver fast.  So we decided I better stay close to the hospital.  Well...Thursday comes and goes with very little contractions.  then Friday comes and I go in to have my membranes stripped.  Saturday comes (my due date) no baby.  Sunday passes...Monday passes...Tuesday passes...Wednesday the 6th comes and I call the Dr. to go back in for another appt. so we can discuss my options again.  I told him I wanted to have the baby right away, but it was later in the afternoon so he didn't really seem like it was logical to start that process.  My Dr. doesn't work on Thursdays so he said we would try the induction again that Friday.  I was really bummed because both me and Danny had basically taken a week off from work that we didn't need to and I was getting super frustrated with the whole thing. 
So we went home and about 20 minutes later the Dr. office called and said there were scheduling problems and that I would be able to do my induction on Friday...So I could either push it to next Monday or come back in right away!! Hallelujah!! I was sooo happy.  I called my mom and she started to make her way up here to stay with Ashlynn, and we sent Ashlynn with Danny's Aunt till my mom got there and off to the hospital we went! yay!

We got to the hospital at about 4:30 and got everything set up and ready to go.  This time, my cervix was more forward and the Dr. was able to break my water first thing at 5:00 and the contractions started right away.  And they weren't pleasant at all! They came really hard and fast.  I was happy because I knew I would finally be having this baby, but then pretty miserable at the same time.  They barely even gave me any pitocin this time.  At about 7:00 I was done being in pain and got an epidural (which they had to do twice cause it didn't work the first time) then at 8:40 I was to a ten!! Dr. was paged to come back to the hospital.  I'm sure he was also a little happy that I went so quickly, so he wouldn't be out all night.  Then Chase was here at 9:26 pm. 
He was 8.2 lbs 19.5 inches long.  I couldn't believe how big he was.  Ashlynn was only 5.15 lbs and 18.5 inches long.  I decided that last looonnng week he was in there getting all fat and chunky. 
He did have jaundice (as did Ashlynn) but after about 5 days his levels went back down and we didn't have to do that lights. 

On my way to the hospital the first time.  I then grew even more over the next week.  But I never got a picture of it. 

This was at the first induction.  I don't look in pain enough to be having a baby.  :)

These next two pictures i thought were interesting.  I didn't notice it till later.  the first one is at my first induction that failed.  The blue line are how hard my contractions were.  The second picture is the one when I actually delivered.  Definite difference in how hard the contractions were.

He kind of has red hair..

So sweet!!

This is what the clock said right after I delivered

Ashlynns first time meeting her brother.

Holiday family time

We kind of had 3 Christmas's this year.  It was a good time.  We went to Danny's Dad's house here in Heber first, then went to Cedar City for a few days, then off to Circleville for a weekend.  It was really nice to be in southern Utah again.  We do miss it but we are happy where we are now.  

At Grandma and Grandpa Kendall's house.

 Danny had to work Christmas Day, So we ended up celebrating our own Christmas a day later.  Ashlynn was very excited to see dad made it home.  And, to open her presents :)

She was very excited to open this present. 

 My dad has his OWN way of shoveling the walks when it snows...He claims there was a lot of ice so he needed "his big equipment" but I know he just likes to have a reason to ride around in his tractor.  Luckily, Ashlynn got a ride out of it and loved it.  You can kind of see her if you look reeeaal close :) 

At Grandma Chris' house.  She sure does have alot of grandma's....she is a very lucky girl I guess.  She had a good time with her cousins and grandma.

 Danny decided to hitch sadie up for some sledding with his Nephew Hunter. I thought Ashlynn was still a little too little to take on a ride with Sadie :) Maybe next year.

I really enjoy puzzles. when we got to my moms house, I went and bought a puzzle to do on our down time.  It was a 350 piece and thought it would take me the two days we were there to do it.  Well i finished it in about 4 hours.  (with a little help) So then I decided we should do another one.  So me and my family found a 500 piece puzzle at my moms house and did that in about a day.  When we got to Danny's moms house, we were still on our puzzle kick and found one at her house that was 1000 pieces! We were only there for a day and a half and we got half of it done.  But there wasn't enough time to finish it.  So I guess we have a made ourselves a new tradition of doing puzzles over the holidays.  It's a fun easy thing to do for the holiday downtime and full bellies!

Lots a changes

So these last few months have certainly been memorable and definitely life changing.  When I look back at everything that has been going on in our lives I can't believe it.  We've had more changes and decisions to make in the last 6 months than we've probably ever had in our almost 7 years of marriage.  And, it seems like after one big decision is made, another one comes up.  Needless to say my faith and prayers have significantly increased.  I have come to realize just how amazing it is to put all your trust in the Lord and then realize that the choice you made was the right decision.  That overwhelming feeling of 'this is right' has been such a testimony builder for me.

In previous posts I had talked about moving to Heber City, getting a new job,  having a new baby on the way, (I don't know if I've posted that on here yet, Due Mar. 2nd) Danny took an upgrade in flying to captain, and then is also starting a side job of mortgage lending (Anyone refinancing? give him a call. :) ) and then to add to it we are packing up AGAIN and getting ready to close on a house here in Heber City.  We are supposed to move at the end of January.  Guess we'll be here a while :)

All of these changes have happened in such a short amount of time that I feel like our life is just a blur.  However, everything has worked out pretty smoothly.  Other than the nights of no sleep because we kept going back and forth on all of these decisions, we feel good about our everything.

So wish us luck as we continue to go through a lot of adjustments again when baby boy number 2 comes :)

Holiday fun

I think this is the first year since we've been married that we've gotten into the Christmas spirit more than a week before Christmas.  Up until this point, our tree went up about the 15th of December and we didn't do a whole lot in preparation for Christmas.  But one of the nice things about living up north is there are more things for us to go out and do as a family.  There are quite a few pictures so enjoy :).

Seeing the light of temple square

I had to add this one because I have been known to give some pretty dirty looks and they're usually not on purpose I think I just look angry when I'm tired.  Anyway,  Ashlynn clearly has the dirty look thing down.

Our friends the Fuessel's.  It's nice to have good friends to go out and do stuff with. 

We went to the Zoo light of Hogle Zoo. 

Not too many animals were out and about, but the bears were.

Ashlynn with her friend Leila

We also made a huge batch of sugar cookies.  Thanks to pinterest, I found this REALLY good recipe.  I would highly recommend it.  It says to use cake flour, I just used regular and they were still delicious.  I don't know how to make a link...so just go to that website

http://www.abountifulkitchen.com/2012/02/cutlers-famous-sugar-cookies.html

My brother and sister in law came up from provo to help decorate.

Ta-da!! we aren't relaly the best of decorators...but they were still good

Oh Chirstmas Tree Oh Christmas tree...

This was the first year we went to a tree farm to get a tree.  We were used to just buying a tag and going up on the mounting and cutting (or one time shooting...) down our tree. We didn't know how the whole 'buying' a tree thing would go.   This year we went with some friends to get a tree.  I'd have to say, it was the best one we've had to date.