Baby Ben's first Christmas

I know Ben is only a month old but I thought it would be fun to wrap and buy presents for him anyways and from the pictures you can clearly see how excited he was.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

Christmas Party at the Jewels.

We all got together at my sister-in-laws to open gifts and visit with aunt Kim from California and my Neice Ashley came home from BYU. I love family especially the inlaws and it was good to see my little neice all grown up and having a blast in college. I remember when my husband and I were just dating umm like 13 years ago I always like to take his adorable neice with us, now she's all grown and such a beautiful young woman--Love you Ashley oh and she's quite the photographer. These memories are brought to you by her enjoy:

Ben's Trip To The ZOO.

--The Ladies

--our every expanding family* photo by Alina my neice

--what a handsome little monkey

There's Music in the Air

My little Mozarts had their Christmas performance and play. The play "Christmas at the OK Corral" was super adorable and Kiora was one of the narrators and both girls did great. Then after the play they changed clothes and had there very first violin concert. Kiora's teacher spotlighted her in the middle of the performance telling the audience how amazing she was and that she had just started two months ago and was already in the advanced class--all that hard work and practice has paid off and I'm so proud of my girls!

How did Ben like the performance? He slept through the whole thing, I guess that is to be expected of a 10 day old baby.

Something In The Turkey

Our Thanksgiving was delicious, so good in fact it put me into labor--yep we had our own little turkey Saturday afternoon at 1:29 pm. I went to the doctor on Wednesday and told her I was chickening out of the whole c-section idea and that if I went into labor before Dec 2, I wanted to try to have the baby without surgery. I was feeling some contractions on and off for several weeks, but Saturday around midnight they became very intense and were coming every two minutes.

I didn't want to wake up my husband so I took a bath and tried to deal with the pain as long as possible, and by 4 I was more than ready to go to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital around 5 a.m., and I was checked and an IV was put in and the nurse called my Doctor. After the Nurse left Tim looked at me said kinda puzzled "umm so I guess we are staying" awe I love this guy. The first thing I asked for of course was if they had wi-fi, then for an epidural lol.

We hadn't really picked out a name yet so we spent a few hours going over names. I actually knew my nurse so I was excited and of course got spoiled. I worked with her in the hospital on Med-surg before I moved to Phoenix. Dr. R came in a few times and we went over my previous labors of 36 hours, and all my complications, and we talked about having a low threshold for a C-section, and then she had to go check on a few other patients--there must have been something in the turkey because the hospital was over flowing with women in labor, and they didn't have enough rooms for everyone, but I luckily got the last recovery room.

My parents came in to talk to me and to get my poor starving husband some food. I felt a lot of pressure and had the nurse call my doctor, and she came in just in time for me to push. Three contractions and our handsome little man was here 6 lbs 11 oz --13 hours of labor, record time for me, and absolutely no complications.

My recovery was not so great. . . The next day I was able to take my little man home. Tim told me he felt like he was busting me out of prison because usually I'm in the hospital for at least 4 or 5 days--I think part of the reason I was able to go home so soon was because they needed the room.

We had named him Darius Vaughn--I was on drugs when I chose that name and after getting to know our little man I knew he was a Benjamin, and he's just perfect!!!!!

The End Of Days Are At Hand.

Never in my life would I have imagined me of all people to win such an award as this--PERFECT ATTENDANCE. It frightens me to the core, in away this is actually more impressive than pigs flying, so clearly the end of days must be here.

OK in all seriousness I was dumbfounded when I opened up my email and couldn't help but bust up laughing, you see I'm not one for routine, and schedules, and predictability, I love change and spontaneity, adventure and surprises--and this was definitely a huge surprise to me. In high school I hated going to school, in fact I joined ever club and sport, just to get out of school: choir, band, cheerleader, color guard, track, volleyball, basketball, french club, student council, FBLA, NHS--yep even the chess club and knowledge bowl, and even with all those approved absences I still ditched just about every day, in fact so much I almost didn't graduate from high school even though I had a 4.0. College was pretty much the same and so on and so on.

I guess I'm living proof that people can and do change. And I would like to accept this prestigious award--who doesn't like free money-- and in doing so I would like to thank the one man who has made this impossible task achievable, my darling husband, who not only watch my children, cooked dinners every night, did all the house hold chores while I slaved away working from home in my sweats, and who of course never played hookie a day in his life--he even went to work on his birthday, what kind of animal does that, oh but most importantly for giving me daily words of encouragement like "you should quit", "you don't need to work", "Don't go to work", "I'll pay you an allowance more than you make working" etc because there is one thing I despise more than boring schedules and routines and that is being told what to do--lol.

Dreams really do come true--sniff sniff.

*picture credit http://dailybail.com/

Lost wallet--lousey luck

I'm not going to lie it's been nothing but headaches since we moved back to Pima and nothing seems to be working out the way I had planned. All the classes my husband needed to take where filled, I didn't get my applications in time to finish up my degrees, we had to take Kam's to E.R., our remodeling efforts have been a complete disaster, I was stung by a scorpion, my husband's work fell through so it's been a little tight without his big pay checks, and I wasn't expecting to have to pay cash for school or doctors visits because I thought we would keep our insurance and get student loans, but that didn't work out either. We haven't had time to go to Disneyland and now he loses his wallet. GRRRRR. I keep telling him maybe it's a sign we should just move back, but the little booger just tells me that maybe it's a sign we are where we should be and all the stress we have been having has been a test to see if we can get through the rough patches and get to our blissful paradise.

He totally stole my thunder--I'm always the one telling everyone it's going to be OK, and I'm an incurable optimist and never worry about anything, and here he is giving me advice on how to look on the bright side. I guess after almost ten years of him being married to me all my optimist mumble jumble is starting to sink in. Of course he was right although it did take a few months things are starting to work themselves out.

We found his wallet, the remodeling is coming along, and missing out on turning in my application is going to work out the best in the long run. My work has been going great and I will have 6 weeks time off. Not everything is exactly how I planned but it's been so nice having time, being around family, and living in a small town again. We are coaching our girls in soccer, they love their school--things are good, well at least until my hormones go crazy again. I love being pregnant.

*picture credit google images