3 weeks old!

Kellie Brianne joined our family on April 9, 2010. She's 3 weeks old today and life seems to be getting a little less crazy.


We got a package in the mail from some college friends with this beautiful quilt. Kellie loves it too and promptly went to sleep (she does that a lot, thank goodness!)

This was taken the day my mom left to go back to Texas. Of course with 3 kids now it is impossible to get everyone looking at the camera at the same time, so we'll go with the one that makes me and Quest look the best :)

The final (and only, whoops!) belly shot with Kellie. It is still amazing that there was an over 8lb baby in there! We had a fun story on our way to the hospital this time. We had to be there at 6 a.m. for the 7:30 c-section. We had set an alarm for 4:30 knowing that we are big snooze pressers and we wouldn't actually get up then. Well of course I didn't sleep that great with being 9 months pregnant and nervous for the next day. I had been waking up every hour, until the 4 o'clock hour rolled around and I slept right through that. I woke up again and looked at my watch and it was 5:25! We had planned on leaving at 5:30, and still had a few more things to pack up. We ended up throwing what we had in the car and were out of our parking garage before 5:40, and walked in the front doors of the hospital right at 6. So even with the scheduled c-section, we still had a fun race to the hospital story in the end :)

And here's a picture of baby Kellie in the NICU with everything hooked up to her. You can't see it in this picture, but she also had an IV in her little foot, poor girl :( It was so strange trying to hold her and work around all the wires and make sure nothing came unhooked that would cause an alarm. There were constantly little alarms going off on all the babies there, I found myself looking at her monitor a lot to make sure it wasn't hers. It was so nice when we went to pick her up and she was completely detached from everything!

A few pictures from Texas

We didn't end up taking too many pictures (well there were over 400 pictures actually) while we were out in Texas this time. We really only got pictures from 2 different photo shoots, one with just Shannon and Fallon and one with their cousins, Micah and Evelyn. And it turned out they were wearing the same outfits both times, but they worked because they matched, they are cute, we were in Texas and Grammy made them. The first one was outside and I had wanted to take their jackets off for it, but it just ended up being way too cold to not wear them so Shannon's jacket really doesn't match, but they still turned out cute.

This picture was one of the last ones we took from that photo session. All the kids were a little cranky so I was off on the sidelines making faces to make them laugh, I love how genuine their smiles are because they were actually laughing. And it's too bad all the grandkids don't fit on the bench anymore, and they especially won't all fit later this year :)

Happy 3rd Birthday Shannon!

I can't believe it's been 3 years now since I received my best birthday present ever, the day my baby was born. We had waited so long to finally meet her and now the time is going by way too fast! Shannon is such a joy in our lives, even with her craziness most days. She has turned into quite a little lady and I'm so grateful that she is in our family. So Happy Birthday Shannon, and I'm so glad I get to share my special day with your special day!

Classic Santa picture

We went to get our annual Santa picture at the mall a few weeks ago. We tried to talk up Santa as much as we could to avoid too many tears. Well Shannon was pretty excited and actually ran right up to Santa and got on his lap. Fallon was another story, as soon as I started walking towards Santa with her she burst into tears. She cried the entire time we were trying to get a picture, which in turn made Shannon a little more nervous. So we couldn't get a smile out of Fallon at all, and this was the best fake smile we could manage from Shannon. Overall I think it turned out pretty cute, and I can't wait to share this with them whne they are teenagers :D

Name help please!

When we found out we are expecting a third baby girl we got so excited that we don't have to buy hardly anything! But then we realized that we do have the all important task of giving this little girl a name. We love the first 2 girl names we picked out, but for some reason we're having a harder time choosing a name that we both like this time. We actually had it narrowed down to 2 names, Madison or Lily but for each of the names one of us loves it and the other thinks it is just OK. And then I found a reason to eliminate Lily from the running (silly reason) so I would love some new suggestions!

Caption This Contest

National Adoption Month

I just learned from a friend that November is National Adoption month. So I thought I'd share her video about her adoption experience as well as their journey to adopt a 2nd baby. Our family feels a special bond to adoption as well. Quest was adopted when he was an infant and that has forever changed his life. There is no telling where he would be if his birth mother hadn't made that choice, or if we would have even ever met. So I send a special thank you to his birth mother for making that extremely hard decision, Quest is the man he is today because of you.

We also had to make the decision ourselves about adopting a baby when we had been trying to get pregnant for so long. It is never an easy decision, but we both felt at peace with it. We had gotten to the point of filling out the initial paperwork and just needed to make an appointment with the bishop when we found out we were pregnant with our beautiful Shannon.

Please watch this video and if you know anyone who you think would like to see it feel free to pass it along, I know they won't mind :)

So to all out there who have been blessed by adoption in some way, you are truly blessed indeed.