Christmas Pics 2009

Here are all the pictures taken this Holiday. I didn't take the time to edit them so you are getting them all. You will see pictures from Scott's Birthday, Christmas Eve dance at the Burton church, Christmas Eve party at the Lloyd Ricks home, Christmas Day, Chritmas dinner at the McGarry's, snowmobiling with Grandpa McGarry and the Pete and June Ricks family Christmas party at Gringos this past Sunday. It was a great Holiday spending time with family.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Random December Pics

It has been a busy month so I thought I would catch up and just post a few things from December. Ashtyn's Christmas program. She is on the first row standing up third one from the right wearing the green hat and glasses. What a cutie! Sorry about the bad video, Macy was fussy so I was trying to video and hold her at the same time while rocking her back and forth. Really bad combination for trying to video tape but you do what you can do. My only other option would have been to have Brigham video and that would have been much much worse. The beautiful tree, thanks to Scotty Macy's first pony tail. Making the gingerbread house which lasted 30 minutes before the kids started eating it. Macy loves her tummy time

Christmas Decor

All I can say is Bah Hum Bug. I really want to get into the Christmas spirit, but it just isn't in me this year. I have had no desire to decorate but since we have kids I really have had no choice. We finally drug out our decor and it just made me grumpier. I am tired of the same old stuff we have had for ten years now. On top of that I had no control over how the ornaments were going on the tree as I had to sit there and nurse the baby while this was all taking place. I tried to stay positive (and calm) and not ruin it for the kids who were having a great time finding their ornaments from years past and sticking them really close to each other on the tree near other items of the exact same color (remember I am staying calm). I mentioned to Scott that our decor was old school and too cutesy and that I would rather have a "pretty" tree this year and decorate our big ledge with garland instead of a bunch of random stuff. I had to leave them to decorating as I had to fulfil my Relief Society board calling and head to the church to decorate for our Christmas Dinner we are having tonight. This is what I came home to. I HAVE THE BEST HUSBAND EVER! He didn't dare take anything out of it's packaging or re-decorate the tree for fear that I wouldn't like what he had picked. He gets some major bonus points for having the guts to pick out tree decorations. I like what he chose, he did good. I love you Scott, thanks for being so thoughtful!

Macy was blessed yesterday and the day turned out very nice. Thanks to everyone who came and helped make it a special day. All dolled up and ready to go. I made her little bracelet for her blessing day. This is the same dress we blessed Ashtyn and Haylee in. Macy with Grandma McGarry. Grandpa had to go back to church and Grandma had to come later because she was the only one that could play the organ at church that week. I missed getting pictures of Michelle, Brock, Kelli, Shane, Shaylee, Brandon, Britni, Logan, Whitney, Rachel, Jeremy, Isaac & Ainsley who were also there. Aunt Gail, Uncle Bruce, Jacob and Gigi Scott's side of the family. By this point in picture taking Haylee was crying and Brigham wouldn't grace us with his presence. Good times! Our complete family. We are so happy to have Macy here finally to join us.

Guess Who Is...

SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT! I put her down at 11:30 last night and she slept until 9a.m. The night before she slept from 10:30 to 8:45 but we woke her up this time so we could get her ready for church. On Friday evening I came home from a day of shopping and she slept from 5:30p.m. until midnight was up for an hour and then slept until 9 the next morning. Lets just hope this lasts! Yes, I am as happy as she is about the whole thing.

Immunizations

Today I took Macy to get her 2 month shots. I dread these appointments knowing that they will be fussy for the next few days but it has to be done. She was upset before they even gave her the shots, in fact the nurses walked in and turned around and walked out thinking they must have already given her the shot and that they had the wrong room or something. We weren't off to a good start. Eventually I got her to calm down, got her mad again after the shots and then she rested peacefully while it was my turn. For a few years now I have been dealing with high liver enzyme levels which cause me to have tightness in my chest, heartburn, dry dry skin and maybe even the lovely rash I had while I was pregnant. Since my deductable had been met for the year we decided to get things test further to figure out what is causing this. I am scheduled for an ultrasound tomorrow morning at the hospital to see if my bile duct is clogged or if damage was done to it when I had my gall bladder removed 8 years ago. They also took blood to run tests on for liver issues. I have already been tested for hepatitis and have ruled that out so it should be interesting to see if/what we find. Back to Miss Macy... For her weight of 12.56 lbs, she is at 82% and her height of 23 in puts her at 64%. They said she is very alert for her age and keeps her head up amazingly well. We are thrilled with her progress, she took a 37% jump on her weight since our last visit when she was 10 days old. I guess my milk is working just fine for her. Here she is with her bandaids. Brigham was pretty bummed that he was the only one that didn't get a shot today. That kid is crazy and really, really wants a shot. When we got the h1n1 vaccine he was ticked because we ended up getting the mist instead of the shot. I wonder if he will really be a big fan of shots when he actually has to get one.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Halloween 2009

This picture is a classic. Haylee is such a diva, Ashtyn quite the opposite. All ready for the Kennedy Spookfest, Two cowboys, Casper, Dorothy, and Hannah Montana The most I dressed up this year was fake eyelashes. Macy was Casper the ghost for a few minutes until she had a blow out all over her outfit. Oh well. Since we didn't have anything to dress Macy up as my friend Darci let us borrow this little outfit. It was a little tight on her but we made it work. Thanks Darci! We attended our ward party which was a huge hit. Tons of people showed up and all the kids had a blast. Here they are getting ready to play red light, green light. We entered our mummy pumpkin in the pumpkin carving contest and took second place. Not too shabby. We won a pumpkin bucket full of Halloween goodies. Carving pumpkins. Haylee painted her pumpkin this year but decided to do it in her underwear...thus no pictures Gutting the pumpkins. The kids were determined to do this on their own which was fine by us. I was feeding Macy and didn't get a chance to take pictures of the final product. I am lame and was going to get a picture later and completely forgot. The pumpkins are now in the trash so I guess it is too late. Brigham carved an alien and Ashtyn carved a cute Frankenstein.

{Macy 7 weeks}

Macy is growing so fast! She is starting to smile and coo but you usually only get these right when she wakes up from a nap. She has officially grown out of her newborn clothes. She loves to listen to you talk and stares intently at you while you do. She is patient with her siblings as there is always a lot of noise. She has had a few run ins with the big brother but only lets out an angry cry when he touches her wrong. When he comes around her now you can tell she gets a little nervous but she still trusts him enough not to scream and cry when he gets close. I am sure the time will come. She is finally on a schedule for the most part. She goes to sleep around 9 wakes up around 12:30 for a feeding back to sleep and then up again around 6:30 to eat again. Some night she is up every three hours but lately she is starting to sleep longer. Thank heavens! During the day she eats every 2.5 to 3 hours, hangs out for about an hour and plays either listening to Mom talk and play with her or just kickin' it on the floor or in her bouncy seat. When she gets fussy I rock her for a few minutes and she sleep for the next hour or so until we start the process all over again. I have tried just laying her down for her naps and she throws a big fit. I have tried letting her cry it out but after 20 minutes I feel guilty and she is so ticked at me she doesn't even settle down for several minutes even while I am holding and loving her. She usually stops crying the second I pick her up in normal circumstances. Since she is my last baby I am going to snuggle and rock her to sleep. I don't care what any of the books say! I have yet to capture a good smile picture. This is the best I have captured so far and the little stinker turned her head at the last minute. At least you can kind of see it. Here she is hanging with Daddy. When Macy sleeps she burrows her head in my armpit (lovely I know) or she covers her head with her hand (see below) She gets that from her Dad. She also loves to sleep on her stomach. (Yes, I know "back to sleep" is the rule) I just love to see her little body all scrunched up. Aren't her little pants the cutest!?!

Brigham Turns Four

I can't believe it has already been four years. Four years ago our little B came along and we have loved life with him since. He has such a fun personality and keeps us laughing every day. I took the day off work and so we could spend the day together. We went to Gringos and ate lunch, they sang to him which was imbarassing for him but he handled it well. Then we went to Wal Mart and picked out the toys to put in his party bags for his sisters and cousins who would come to his Birthday party that night. Brigham was hard this year and every time we would ask him what he wanted for his bday he would say nothing. We took him to Toys R Us to inspire him with some ideas and still he really didn't care about anything kept saying he didn't want anything...even at Toys R US. What!?! Scott and I were on our own and decided to get him the new Fisher Price version of Legos, a tool kit and bendaroos. At the last minute he decided on a birthday theme of Transformers so we got Transformer birthday products to decorate with. Getting ready to blow out his candles. He got this fun new UNO game from Grandma and Grandpa McGarry. It is pretty cute and I would recommend it to anyone with preschool age kids. He picked out this balloon at Broulims. The lady helping us was really fun and even got on the microphone and announced to all the Broulims shoppers that it was Brigham's fourth birthday. He thought that was pretty cool. He had lots of helpers when it came time to open gifts. Haylee and Brock opened the legos and color book that Brock, Aunt Michelle and Uncle J gave him. He did't seem to mind as he was busy opening his other gifts. I didn't find time to make him a cake so we picked one up at Broulims. I bought some fondant and put the Transformers logo on it so we could tie the cake in with the theme. He was happy with it. Happy Birthday B, we love you!

The Latest

The kids are out for Spud Harvest and we had great plans to head to Utah on 10-7 and stay for five whole days. My nephew Wacy is entering the MTC today and my other nephew Ben is getting baptized on Saturday so it was a perfect reason to go spend some time with family. Our plans changed when Ashtyn and Brigham woke up with 103 degree fevers on Tuesday. We are all really bummed that we are still here but we are making the most of it. I made home made play dough,got a new movie and each of them their own Sprite. We only cry when we realize that we should really be in Utah right now. Bummer. They are feeling better so maybe by Friday we can still make it down. For now, here are a few pics from the last week or so: My little helpers. They all love helping with Macy and I must say I appreciate the help and actually trust them to hold her. The Ricks' family has six people with birthday in October alone so we just throw one big birthday bash to celebrate. We had it at our house this year. This doesn't look like much of a party, but it was fun. We got out the chocolate fountain, had homemade pumpkin pie, turkey, potatoes etc. We didn't even eat the cake because we were all too full! It also snowed this week. Here is Macy and her first snow. Here are the girls playing in the snow. Brigham threw a big fit over his winter boots so he choose not to play outside. Maybe next snow (and now that he has new boots) Macy is officially 4 weeks old. Here she is with Haylee, she is getting big way too fast! Also notice that Haylee lost one of her two front teeth on 10-3. She was so excited.

My Babies

I have an awesome neighbor, Brianne Serrano, who took pictures of the kids when Macy was 11 days old. Here is her website for anyone interested in getting pictures done or to just view some other cute photos http://myperfectportraits.blogspot.com/. I had a really hard time picking favorites so here are a bunch of the photos she took. So sweet, can you see why I have a hard time putting her down every day? Ashtyn and Haylee insisted that we make her where this tutu. I am very glad we did because it turned out adorable. She is the cutest ballerina ever. Wide awake when she should be sleeping. Gotta love those eyes though! Love this one because you can see her head of hair I wish you could see just how small these boxes and baskets are. It amazes me that they fit in them. This one I was just holding her trying to get her to fall asleep (of course she was wide awake when we wanted her to sleep) and Brianne captured the moment. Love it! All of my babies together. I can't believe I have four of them now! I am so excited to get these photos framed and displayed in my home. I love, love, love feet. This picture is so much fun. Thanks Brianne for the great pics. I am thrilled to have captured so many great moments.

1 Week Old

I can't believe a week has already gone by. We are really enjoying Macy. She has been so good for us so far (knock on wood). So that I don't forget, here is her birth story: On Labor day (9-7-09) I was miserably sick with the flu. Scott took the kids to McDonalds at around 1 o'clock and when I was running to the bathroom to throw up I ended up passing out and landed right on my stomach. I couldn't get up so I lied there for a while until I could get enough strength to get myself up. Scott finally got home and called the doctor to see what we should do. She had us go to the hospital to make sure all was well. At the hospital they gave me two bags of fluid for dehydration and some Zofran for the nausea. I felt so much better after that and we were able to go home after a few hours. We left the kids at my sister-in-laws house for the night as we were scheduled to be induced the next morning anyway. At home I tried to get some rest but started experiencing contractions at 12:30 a.m. (I have never had contractions on my own without pitocin, my water usually breaks)we were totally out of our element as to what to do. I waited until the contractions were about 5 minutes apart and I couldn't take them anymore which was at around 3 a.m. When we arrived at the hospital I was at a seven so they admitted me and I had my epidural by around 4:30 a.m. and then just hung out and waited and got some rest. Around 9 they broke my water and said they would give it until 10 before they started pitocin. 10 o'clock came and went and I was put on pitocin by 11 and then finally started to progress. I started feeling contractions again and then before we knew it, it was time to start pushing. Unfortunately the pitocin wore off and I went through the last leg of it feeling everything. Ugh! I had to wait for my midwife Helene to come up from the office but Dr. Lovell stood by the room just in case. They made me wait to push which is almost impossible but I survived and Helene made it on time to deliver Macy at 12:17 p.m. on Tuesday. Welcome to the world Macy, we love you!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

{Introducing Miss Macy}

Macy L Ricks arrived Tuesday September 8th at 12:17 p.m. weighing in at 8 lbs 0 oz 19inches. She is a little sweetie and we are so grateful she is finally here! I will post more of her story later. For now here are some pics! Her first bath which she didn't enjoy except for getting her hair washed. I got my tubes tied so I was just wheeled in from surgery. Brigham was so concerned about me and stood at my bedside and rubbed my arm. Brigham, Daddy and Macy Mommy and Macy Ashtyn holding her for the first time Brigham taking her all in Haylee excited about her. Brigham, Mommy and Macy just before we were bringing her home. Ready to go home.