San Diego!

One Friday last month Michael was working from home, we had no plans for the weekend and I was feeling bored! I threw out the idea that maybe we could just get in the car and drive to San Diego, it sounded fun but we just couldn't commit. After sitting around talking about it for a while, I went on my Ipad booked a hotel room and told everyone to get in the car! We left 15min later with a change of clothes and our beach stuff. Maybe a crazy idea for a family with 3 kids and a newborn but it sure was better than sitting around all weekend! We were only gone about 24 hours but made good memories while we were there.

San Diego ended up being freezing cold and windy but we stayed at one of our favorite hotels and found a sunny place in the cove at La Jolla to play at on Saturday.

Rhett stayed warm in the Moby wrap and underneath my jacket.

Our little princess was so excited to play on the beach.

A mom and baby sea lion were super close also playing in the cove.

Michael using his wet suit for the 2nd time in 4 years ; )

Easter

We love Easter! It is so great to reflect upon Christ's resurrection and what that means for us.When discussing why we celebrate Easter in family home evening, my Joshua asked if it was to celebrate Jesus' half birthday ; ) So I knew I had a little work to do!

We watched a few videos and discussed Easter's true meaning the week before Easter. On Easter morning we followed the jelly bean trail the Easter Bunny left to find a few surprises. Then we went to church and enjoyed some great music and talks. After church we drove up north to Grandma Connie's house. She has the best yard for an Easter egg hunt with tons of little hiding places.

Josh saw this outfit at Kohls and said "ooh Mom I really want this" I was so shocked by his enthusiasm I bought it for him!

Ethan never smiles for pictures and always looks like he is dying instead.

We also colored eggs and Grandma's house and the boys got to play with their friend Jacob.

Sweet baby Peitin and her pretty blue eyes.

More Rhett Pics!

I'm always a month or two behind on posting pictures on my blog : / So Rhett is already much bigger than these pictures. It makes me sad that my sweet boy is growing so fast...

Our four kids!

I couldn't resist trying to pose Rhett for a few pictures, all that sweet baby skin is just so soft. This is him when he turned 1 month old.

Visitors

Rhett had lots of visitors in his first month of life. 

Grandma Connie was at our house when Rhett came home, and stayed a few days to help out. We love Grandma Connie and are grateful she was able to come stay with us.

Grandma Sandy, Aunt Maddie, and Cousin Peitin also came to visit our tiny little man.

Two weekends in a row we got to have Grandma & Grandpa Barnum, Aunt Melissa, and Cousins Hadley & Eevie at our house as they were traveling to and from Texas. We should have a lot of more pics of the fun times, but of course the camera only got used just a couple of times. Avery and Hadley are almost the same age, they love each other but fight like crazy! We know they will be great friends later in life!

For one of the activities we went hiking on Thunderbird Mountain where you can see the Phoenix Temple being built. We also went to the visitor center and learned about some of the special things that will be part of this temple.

The First Week

Here are some pictures from the first week our little man was home. New babies and firsts are always so much fun! 

Avery helping with Rhett's first bath.

I wanted to remember how tiny he was, so that is why he is next to Michael's shoe : )

Big brothers wanted a chance to feed the baby!

Rhett's Birth Story

Well Rhett Odean Barnum was born on March 9th, 2014. I was 37 weeks 6 days pregnant, so he came just a few days earlier than my other kids. Like my other kids he wanted to cause some excitement with his birth. So here is his story:
 On Sunday evening we were sitting in a special church meeting to split our ward. Soon after it started I felt a contraction that was painful, I have a lot of contractions usually but this one was more intense. I looked down at my cell phone and the time said 6:46pm. 5 minutes later I had another intense one, I let myself time one more and then decided we needed to leave the meeting. We got out to the car a little after 7pm. We texted some friends, the Paynes, in our neighborhood to see if they could take our kids and drove the 20 mins home. My labor was escalating quickly and we got our kids changed out of church clothes and sent them off. We got back in the car and knew we would not be able to make it our hospital downtown and decided to drive to the closest one which is about 25 minutes from where we live. My labor continued to get very painful and intense and I was getting scared because I knew baby Rhett was still breech and I didn't know if I was going to have enough time to get prepped for a c-section. We got to the hospital and it took us a few minutes to figure out where to go. The lady in registration of course wanted our info but got me into a wheelchair and upstairs soon after she saw that my contractions were 2-3min apart. In OB triage I was already to the point where I could barely talk, but told them I have fast labors and needed a c-section. This is a smaller hospital so they didn't have a doctor there and had to page someone at home : / They said he was 30 min away...Michael and I started getting really nervous about how we were going to get this baby out. It took the nurses only a few minutes to realize that I'm not joking about having fast labors and they started to scramble to get me an IV etc. They put me in a delivery room and I had a midwife and 3-4 nurses in my room when I told them that I had to start pushing. The pain was excruciating and I kept thinking this baby is not going to be able to get out. My water broke when I started pushing, my second push and his whole body came out, I then lost the urge to push but knew I had to since his head was stuck. The midwife tried to apply some pressure above his head and I finally had another strong contraction and got his head out. He didn't cry immediately and I was so nervous that he was hurt, but finally he did and he started to pink up. In the end he was born at 8:27pm and was breathing and healthy! He only weighed in at 5 lbs 9 oz, my smallest baby yet. I think he knew he needed to be small for his delivery. I can't say that I would choose to go through that again but am so thankful now to be holding a healthy strong little boy. We stayed the night and went home after his 24 check the next night.

He's tiny but a good nurser and has had no breathing problems or jaundice. He is a pretty content baby and will sleep a couple 3 hour stretches at night which is good for my babies : )

Rhett's Pregnancy

Going into this pregnancy I of course planned on documenting everything and taking pictures so that I could look back later and remember. Did that happen? well no not really : ) Life gets busy and before you know it, the baby is here. Here are just a few of the pics I took during my pregnancy. Everything went well, I got a big belly quick like I usually do and it got hard towards the end to carry it around. I was able to keep working right up to the end, even though my blood pressure and swelling started to rise the last couple of weeks. We found out the baby was a boy by 15 weeks and had several ultrasounds showing us so. Rhett was breech from about 25 weeks and of course stayed that way too.

18 weeks

25 weeks

31 weeks on my birthday

Almost 36 weeks, and the last pic I got of my belly.