Our Growing Boy

Tate has been growing and changing sooo fast! 

Maybe I'm a mean mom, but I think it is so cute when Tate starts to cry.  His facial expressions are so funny

Happy to sleep in with Dad

Showing off his sweet muscles after a bath

Recently, Tate has been smiling at us.  He smiles and coos for about a half hour every morning.  It is so cute, especially when he gurgles and coos

more smiles and coos

Yesterday we blessed Tate.  Some of my family came

Almost all of Colby's family was there too

The four kids all born with in a year--sabras trying to hide the fourth one--- I can't wait for them to play together, they will be such good friends

Colby gave Tate a sweet blessing.  It was a special experience for us.  I am so grateful to have married Colby, and that he presides over our family in love and righteousness, and is worthy to hold the preisthood to bless our family.  I was talking to a freind in our ward during releif society- I know naughty, we should have been listening to the  whole lesson, noy just parts of it...- and she pointed out to me that not everyone had been married in the temple(our lesson was on temple marriage), and  there were a few husbands that were inactive and the wives came to church alone.  My heart just broke for those girls because I had just witnessed again how we have been so blessed for being active in the church and married in the temple, and these girls didn't have that, and I know they want it so bad.  It just made me realize how blessed we are, and made me remember to be more grateful for it. 

After holding Tate, my dad, mom, and Colby all complained that their arms were dead and hurt because Tate weighed so much.  So after church, we weighed him and he now at 6 weeks, weighs 11.8 pounds.

so sweet!

Tate is HERE!!!!

This pic was taken after a long night with absolutly NO sleep.. Precious Tate was not happy his first night here and cried the whole night through.  Every time I would get him to sleep, I would lay him down in his bassinette and he would start screaming.  Finaly my night nurse came in and asked if I wanted her to take him.  I said yes, but shortly after, the fire alarm went off, and she had to bring him back.  Finally I just let Tate sleep by me, which my nurses were not happy with, and we were both able to get some rest.  All night though, I was counting down the seconds to morning when Colby would come back and could share the misery with me.  Finally he did come back, and I was so releived.  By that time, tate was sleeping again, so lucky Colby.

Proud Dad with his sweet little boy.

So, I will tell you my birthing story if you want to know all the gushy details.  Tate was due June 1st, but didn't come then.  The Dr. scheduled me for an induction on Wednesday the 8th.  I was really scared of getting induced, but I definately didn't want to go longer, so went along with it.  My sister in law had told me about an herb that was supposed to soften the cervex and help get things going, so I started taking that on the 4th.  I also heard that massages would help get things going, so I ent and got a massage from a woman that specializes in pregnancy massage.  It was really wonderful! But, Saturday passed nothing, Sunday passed nothing, accept I was very nausious.  Dusty and Mel had come over for Sunday dinner, and right in the middle of dinner, I raced to the bathroom and threw up everything.  It was the worst throw up EVER! and to boot, it all happend in the bathroom right by the kitchen, so everyone at the kitchen table got to enjoy it with me.  I din't think that was an early sign of labor though, so went on with life like normal.  Then Monday morning around 12 am, I started having contractions.  They were all in my hips and lower back, so I didn't think it was a big deal and went back to sleep.  By 12:30, it was starting to be a big deal, and so I got up and walked around then went back to bed. At 1 am, I had to get up and walk around again, then went back to bed.  This repeted every half hour until 2, then I took a warm shower to see if that would ease the pain.  At 2:30 I got up to walk a little more and I felt a big gush of fluid.  I thought my water had broken, so I woke up Colby and asked him what I should do.  He didn't know, so I told him to go back to bed, and I called the hospital.  They said I should probably come in, but could take my time if I wanted.  Since I live two seconds from the hospital, I took my time and paked a bag, and we got to the hospital around 4:30 am.  The nurse checked me, said my water hadn't broken (but something had, because Iw as totaly soaked after the gush at my house) and I was dialted to a 3.  She asked me my pain level in the contractions.  I said I was at an 8.  She rolled her eyes and chuckled under her breath and wrote down a 7.  Then she told me to either go home, or walk around the hostpital a bit.  I knew if I went home, I wouldn't make it back, so we walked around until 6 am.  While I was walking around, I would throw up and was really nausious, and the contractions were getting BAD! I would have to sit down during them.  The nurses would walk by and ask if I was ok, but there was nothing they could do.  Finally at 6, I went back to the delivery floor and told my mean nurse, that I couldn't take it, and I wasn't walking around anymore.  The nurses were just changing shifts then, and my delivery nurse was so good, she helped me to a room, and checked me (which my mean nurse wouldn't do, because she didn't think I knew anything).  I was dilated to a 7!  I aked for an epidural, and was afraid the baby would come with out it - I was terrified of that- it took the anethesiologist at least and hour and a half to get there.  The good thing about that though is my contractions were so bad, I couldn't keep track of the time.  Then he came, gave me my epidural, and it was a breaze after that!  At 10, the Dr came and broke my water.  It was terrible green and brown color because the baby had gone to the bathroom inside of me.  This caused a little anxiety, because I didn't want the baby to breath it in, and i was really worried about that.  By 10:30, it was time to start pushing.  My nurse told me the baby was crowning, and I looked down to see if I could see anything, but of course I couldn't.  She noticed and grabbed the mirrors, so I could see it all. Every time I pushed though the babies heart rate would go down, and it would take a second to get it back up.  I wouldn't look at the monitor, because I didn't want to know how scared I should be.  i could tell the nurse was quite concerned, and she had me stop pushing until the Dr came.  At 11:30 The dr showed up, and had me push a few times.  Then all of a sudden I saw the Dr hold up this thing covered in brown and green goo.  I looked at it for a second then realized that was my babies face.  He laid the baby on my stomach, and he was HEAVY! I thought for sure over 7.5 lbs (i was hoping for a 7.5 pounder).  Then they raced him over to a team of drs, to suck out his lungs.  When the weighed him, Dr allred guessed 9.1 lbs, but Tate was 9.2 lbs.  Pretty good guess.  The Dr caught my placenta, gave me a few stitches- he said they weren't very bad, which was a amazing, and he left.  Wow, that was easier than I thought it would be.  After sucking out Tate's lungs they brought him over, and Colby and I could hold him.      

So this is a bad picture of me - usually I look a little better than this.  But I just wanted to post this pic so I could remember this day.  I had a day off from work, so was just taking care of the house chores, like laundry, and Colby came in and was studying at the desk. We had such a good time talking together and just being together even though we weren't doing anything special.  He is such a good husband to me.  When I am cleaning the house and doing hously chores, he is always willing to help.  He will carry the laundry baskets downstairs for me, or vacuum the stairs, and scrub the tub. He just is so good to me. 

Fun times snowmobiling

Colby has really started to love jumping his snowmobile.  This makes me nervous, but he insists that it is safe and SO much fun.  I just think it is funny that he loves to take pictures of his snowmobile, and especially this one, stuck in mid jump.

Colby had an opportunity to go do a service project for one of his classes up by Henry's Lake. It sounded like a lot of fun, and very interesting. 

They caught the kind of fish they wanted to breed more of, sedated them, and then took the females and blew all the eggs out with a hose, then took all the males and squished all the sperms out, and mixed them.  This is so they can get a larger population of good fish, and hopefully get rid of the bad fish in the lakes and rivers around here.

Some of the fish they caught and sedated.

The male fish process.

Colby standing where they stored all the eggs after they have been fertilized.

Measuring out the eggs

Mixing eggs and sperms in an iodine mixture.

They pressurized them (I can't remember why this step of the process)

Then spreading the eggs in their containers to grow into small fish. The white ones that you can see are ones that were damaged and died.  All the orange is all the healthy ones that will develop.

Colby has also been studying all kinds of different plants and learning about them and how to determine what kind of plants that they really are.  He is really good at learning and applying all this information.  Every time he goes out he finds something interesting that they were studying in class, and either brings a sample home to me, or to take to his class and update the old samples. He is doing so well in school, I am really proud of him.

Our Island Park Adventure

Our good friends in our ward, the Barnards, invited us to go to Island park for the weekend to stay in their families condo with them.  We went up on a Friday afternoon and stayed until Saturday evening.  It was so fun! We had never done anything like this before, and we were a little nervous to go, but it was one of the funnest things we have done together all winter. We just really enjoyed the Barnards and getting to know them and their family better too.   

This is the kitchen area just after you walk in.

The dining area.  The snow was so high it almost covered the windows.

Living room area where we obviously hung all our snow gear to dry.

Colby really liked the metal piece on the wall, and wants to make one similar to it.

This was the room we stayed in - just pretend that you can't see the mess on the floor...and that we made the bed right.

Mariah, DaNae, Kevin, Kent, and Keith getting ready to take off on our ride to the boy scout camp there.  I was really worried about going for a long ride, but they promised this would be an easy one.  Colby and the boys went for a heavy duty ride earlier that morning.  It was an soft, easy ride, and we had a ton of fun together.  Kent left just after this to go on his mission to Albania.

After every stop we made, the baby would kick and twist around like crazy.  The poor little guy probably didn't know what to think of all the bouncing and loud noise.

Filling up the machines

On our way to the scout camp, we stopped by this river.  It comes straight out of the ground along here somewhere.  You can barely see it, but there is a tiny cabin on the other side of the river, and a spring with a water wheel.  It was so beautiful.  I wish we could have gotten a closer pic, but our camera doesn't have a zoom on it.

At the same spot, on the other side of the bridge, there were tons of duck there, and people would stop to feed them.  It was so fun.

This is all the snow right by our condo.  The boys would drive over it and park their snowmobiles here.

Ice Fishing Season

Colby with the sweet catch of the day.

Dusty admiring the sweet catch.

Dusty digging himself out, while Colby tries to do the same after getting stuck.

Dusty

Blake, Dusty, and Blair

The crew getting ready to go down.

What a cool place we live in.  We have all these wonderful mountains, and lakes.  It is so beautiful here. I love ice fishing, and I wish I could have gone this season, but between work, and being pregnant, I thought it was best not to go.

Colby was jumping off this hill, or climbing it to jump it, and tipped the wrong way and cut up his leg.