Halloween with Nanna and Karren

We are so excited that Nanna and Karren were able to fly in yesterday and spend Halloween with us! Last night we went to a Halloween carnival and had tons of fun, even though we didn't dress the girls up for that. Today we spent the morning at Hailey's preschool doing facepaint for all the kids there, then we went to Callie's school in the afternoon for a character parade. Finally in the evening, it was trick or treat time! I loved how the girls turned out in their costumes. We had bat girl, a kitty and a witch.  It was my first time ever putting makeup on Hailey, and I've been dying since the day she was born to see what those beautiful long lashes would look like with mascara.

Funny story:  Right after I finished doing Brynlees kitty makeup, I looked over at her and she had wiped it all over her face.  I gasped, all the other girls gasped and Brynlee about broke down in tears.  Callie quickly piped up: "It's okay Brynlee, it's not a big deal (I thought she was going to console her). Mom will just start ALL over, take like 3 HOURS to do it and we'll MISS Halloween (as she shrugs and smiles in a matter of fact way)."  We all bust up laughing after that, our girls are silly.

Karren just found out she is having a GIRL!!!!!

Look at Hailey's pose in this one, she is such a little ham.

At dark, cousins Charlotte and Olivia joined us for trick or treating!

And Kayla got the coolest costume from her Nanna.  A shirt that you pull over your head.

Best Friends are the Greatest

One of the things I love most about my girls starting school, is the opportunity that they get to go out and make their first best friend. When kids are little, their best friends are typically their cousins, their siblings or the kids they go to church with.  But there is something really special about going to school, and out of hundreds of kids you are able to find that special friend you connect with.  The best friend that "gets" you, the one that will always be waiting for you on the playground, or saving you a seat in the lunch room.  For me it was always Chelsea Tippetts, until Abigail Hoffman moved to the area, and then we became the three amigos.  We were inseparable. 
For Callie, her first best school friend has been Riley. She was in her kindergarten class last year and was also in her first grade class this year.  Riley's dad built our house and is also building houses around our neighborhood.  So for Callie that is really cool, when she finds her best friend playing at a nearby construction sight.  I caught these sweet pictures of the two of them.

Better late than never

We finally got our Halloween decorations up just a couple days before Halloween, but the girls were happy anyway. I had been promising them, that as just as soon as I felt able I would do it, and I have felt much better this weekend. We are so excited for Nanna and Karren to get here just in time to celebrate Halloween with us!

In other exciting news, Brad killed his first buck of the season with his bow. I'm ready to stock our freezer up for winter.

Callie really really wanted a picture with it.  She is already asking about hunting and can't wait to go on her first hunting trip with her dad, we told her she needs to wait until she's just a little bigger.

Pumpkin Patch fun

Oh how I wish I could have gone to the pumpkin patch with my family, but it just wasn't in the cards for me after everything that has happened. I love all the pictures that my sweet husband took though, and I know they had a blast. Thank you Fletcher Farms and Anderson's for inviting our family!

Pirate Party

Somewhere during the madness of this last month, these two little cutie pies were able to go to a pirate party for Hailey's preschool program. They had everything set up so nice and the little girls had a blast going around to all the pirate booths.

Not how I imagined my month turning out...

Well as I'm sure most everyone heard, my hysterectomy did not end up going as smoothly as I had thought.  I had been having quite a bit of swelling in my stomach after they sent me home and after about a week I started to have a fever of around 102.  We couldn't get the fever to break for hours and were pretty sure I had an infection , so we debated whether to go into the E.R.  I got a hold of my dr. and he felt like the E.R. wouldn't be able to address the problem well, so he wanted to see me first thing in the morning as long as the fever didn't get any higher during the night.  All of our family and friends prayed that the fever would break and after receiving priesthood blessing from Brad and his dad it did finally break.

When we went in  in the morning, the dr. ordered blood work and an ultrasound which showed that I had internal bleeding and a blood infection.  So they had to send me straight to the hospital for a second surgery.  They drained the blood and sent me home with a tube that would continue to let any come out that needed too.  I was put on antibiotics and was told to stay down for the next couple days until he was going to take the drain out.

After that surgery I felt awesome, I didn't realize all the swelling and sickness I had been feeling that whole time was from internal bleeding and infection, not from the hysterectomy.  Once that problem was addressed I wasn't hurting hardly at all and all my swelling was gone.  I was feeling very optimistic when I went into the clinic that morning to have the drain removed.  It was supposed to be just a routine follow up thing following surgery, but quickly turned very scary when I just started bleeding like crazy.  I stayed pretty calm until I could see that my dr. was scared and the nurse was about to cry.  He just kept checking my pulse and asking for more and more gauze and at that point I was just trying not to pass out.  They got me in a wheelchair and rushed me back to the hospital for surgery #3.  I had a sweet lady from church that had brought me to my appointment and Brynlee was in the lobby with her and so I tried to keep it together, but I was so scared.

I am a natural worrier anyway, so situations like this where I have no control, are just super difficult for me.  I was worried about having general anesthesia 3 times in a week in a half.  I was worried about starting healing all over again after days of laying down.  I was worried about them not being able to stop the bleeding.  I was worried about how much everyone had already missed worked and everything everyone had already done to help with our girls already. Pretty much all I could do was just cry, and cry and cry, because what else do you do at that point?

The surgery went okay, they found two smaller spots that I was bleeding from, but didn't find an area that he felt could have produced as much bleeding as I had. He ended up having to cut two small areas on my stomach during surgery #3, so that he could scope it out to make sure they weren't missing anything.  I had to stay in the hospital that night and I was feeling extremely discouraged because they had a drain and pack on my side that they were going to send me home with.  Watching it just fill up without me even moving or doing anything, scared me a lot.  But I will tell you that if this surgery did nothing else for me it made me realize how many people care.  I had so many people call, write, message, help with the girls, bring meals, etc.  So many people joined in fasting and prayer.  It made me realize that sometimes trials like these really bring us all together.  They provide opportunities for us to serve one another.  They provide opportunities for us to stretch our faith, to turn to the Lord in prayer, to put things in his hands.  I am not completely out of the woods yet, but I am feeling much better, my drain is out, my fever has stayed mostly down.  So I hope and pray that my body is healing and that things will only get better from here.
But I just want to thank everyone for everything that they did for our family.  The love and service that I felt has been just amazing.

Surgery

This past week we went to Brad's employee party at Falcon Jet. They had huge bouncy slides, games, cupcake and chili contests, prizes and more.  We all had a lot of fun even through the rain that came and went throughout the day.  The girls favorite part was when they got to get on one of the multi million dollar private jets.  This is our family picture from the event.

On Monday I went in for surgery to get a hysterectomy.  I had been having problems for several years, but at my recent appointment my Dr. believed I had a condition called Adenomyosis, he told me that if I was done having kids that my uterus really needed to come out, because the condition would only get worse with time.  So we decided that was the best thing for our family.  I was super scared, but everything went really well, he was able to keep my ovaries, so that is a plus.  He did find the condition that he thought I had, and my uterus had shifted and grown into surrounding muscle.  So I feel very blessed and fortunate that he was able to find the problem and that everything went as smoothly as it has.  I am just resting and recovering now and am thankful for the many family and friends who have been checking up on me and taking care of me.  I haven't had any kids at home during the day thanks to Aunt Mary, Misti and my mother in law. 

Church Chili Contest and Fall Carnival

Last month I was trying to think of ideas for the young men and young women to do for mutual, and I thought it would be fun if they put on a fall carnival for the primary kids. So I decided to combine it with a Chili contest, since that was something we enjoyed doing the past couple years as well. The mutual kids helped color the posters and things for the games and ran each of the booths. I got most of the decorations and prizes at the dollar store or made a lot of them, so it ended up being a pretty inexpensive activity and a ton of fun!

We had a really good turnout!

Some of the youth:

We had a lot of yummy chili to choose from.  I made a white chili this year, it was my first time making it and I will definitely make it again. It is made with chicken and great northern beans.

Cousins enjoying some desserts.

Kayla helped run the face painting booth:

The Musical Prize Walk (aka cake walk), was one of the little girls favorite games.

Kennedi and Raegan fishing:

Brynlee's favorite activity was the bean bag throw, because she figured out she could get prizes the quickest that way!

Hailey showing off her face paint: