El Tour de Tucson

I'm starting to think my husband can do any kind of double dare physical challenge. First he does a half ironman (did I forget to post about that?) which consisted of a 1.2 mile swim (in open, really cold water), 56 mile bike ride, and he finished it off with a 13 mile run. And just this past weekend he did the 108 mile El Tour de Tucson bike ride.

I suppose the fact that he rode 108 miles on his bike was not the real accomplishment of the weekend. What was even more amazing was that he actually found AND bought a pair of bike shorts! Way to go John!

Seriously though I think he's pretty amazing.



This is John and my brother-in-law Rob who also participated.

A little food for thought

Since I'm apparently incabable of blogging about our lives, I thought I would share this video that I saw on a friend's blog. Enjoy

I'm so excited!!

I can hardly contain my excitement, I just discovered this morning that we now have a Show Low Craigslist! We've been requesting one for years and we finally have it!

http://showlow.craigslist.org/

It really is time

Ok, it's time for another post. I can't locate my cord to download pictures so it's going to have be picture free but I have too much to update. My attempt at documenting our life (I don't scrapbook or write in a journal) through this blog is failing miserably. So here's just a quick summary so that I'll have some memory of this crazy time.

1) We bought our house and have officially moved in. Buying this house has consisted of a whole lot things.

a) big estate sale to empty the house so that we could move in. We did the sale one Thurs, Fri & Sat and it was amazingly successful. Thursday morning we ended up with a constant crowd of people until about noon. We probably had a least 10 people there at a time the entire morning. By the end of the weekend we had sold almost all the stuff. We finally had stuff that people up here were interested in. Kid stuff doesn't do to well up here. We ended up with 2 bedroom sets left and a washer and dryer which we put in an auction that will happen the end of this month. That was a little bit of a pain but my dad came in and saved the day and has taken many loads out to the auction. Thanks Dad!

b) we wimped out and hired someone to paint the entire house. In the end we ended up with 6 different colors (purple in the girls room, tan in the the master and boys room, darker tan in great room, blue in kids bathroom, and lime green - yes lime green in the master bathroom and laundry room, plus the pretty white/slightly cream for the trim. I love all the colors and am so happy that we have it all done. John also managed to rip out the weird fake fireplace before the painter came and luckily so because he did a great job fixing the wall.

c) once the painter was finished we were going to have the tile done but it got delayed because it was on back order so we decided to just move in. Moving week was a little overwhelming but thanks to my 2 sisters it was doable.

d) we moved in and set to work trying to organize. Eventually we got our tile installed and then found out our carpet was also on back order. (I guess the annoyance was balanced by the fact that it confirmed that I had chosen a good tile and carpet and was getting a good price - apparently a lot of people were choosing the same thing).

e) Angela persisted on getting me to tackle the garage so with Alice's help for a couple of days we cleared it out, tucked a lot things away and prepared for our second yard sale. From our move we personally had a lot of things to sell. We held the second one and once again had a lot of traffic. Probably not as much as the first but we still got rid of a lot of stuff. It made me realize that we unknowingly picked a really good weekend to do the first big sale.

f) The entire house has vaulted ceilings (except the bathrooms and laundry room) including the 2ND and 3rd bedrooms and sometime in all of this it was thrown out there that we should build a loft in the girls bedroom. The more John looked into it the more it became a reality. Before I knew it he'd built it and we were able to have the carpet installers even install carpet up there. I have to say John has done some cool things since I've known him but to me this was one of the most impressive. I love it, everything about it. And I'm so impressed that he went from talk to almost finished in a month. I think the kids are going to absolutely love it and it looks so cool! They still have an 8 foot ceiling but it has an opening on the far end of the room. You don't even see the loft when you walk in. Anyway, I can't think of a better way to have added a playroom to this house. Way to go John!

g) This week we finally got our carpet in and let me tell you I love it! I was worried at first that I didn't like the color but the last 2 days I have fallen in love with it.

h) I forgot to say that somewhere in the last month I also went through the house and installed all new door handles and I LOVE them! I think it makes such a huge difference.

We still have a lot to do for the house (baseboards, yard, kitchen counter, etc) but it's coming and we're having small and big victories every week. I really like the layout of the house and am very happy overall with the house itself. The back porch is so great to go sit on especially during a rainstorm. It's nice to be close to the park and the store and we seem to have really great neighbors. In fact this week we had a neighbor come over and invite us to a neighborhood BBQ this Sunday at her house. Fun stuff.

Angela and Alice and my parents get a gold star for all the help they have given me. Alice watched my kids on numerous occasions and her and my mom were a huge help with the first yard sale. They came every day and worked the outside garage stuff while I worked the inside bigger stuff. They were fabulous! Angela devote all her time off this summer to me. It was amazing, she taught summer school and then came and lived with us for basically a month. She changed so many diapers that John started calling her our diaper Sherpa. She basically stepped in and did anything from cleaning the garage to changing diapers to babysitting so John and I could go out to getting up in the night with Collin to putting all the outlet covers back on. Needless to say I miss her greatly and tried everything I could to get her to just move in as a full time nanny/friend. And if anyone is wondering if John was OK with all this, he was. It was a big help to him and he and Angela get along great and well he's just a really good sport about a lot of things.

In the end I probably could spend my whole life trying to say thank you to my family and still never feel like I expressed it enough. It really meant a lot to me and to be completely honest there is literally no way I could have survived it all without them. Seriously, I'm already barely surviving and adding a move to that would have put me over the edge.

In other news, the kids started school this week. Oddly enough we're not entirely sure who Bridgett's Kindergarten teacher will be, it's been a little bit crazy but she's attending and loves her teacher. We're keeping our fingers crossed that she'll be able to stay in her class. She has afternoon Kindergarten and so far has 8 kids in the class. Pretty crazy. Madison started 2ND grade and was thrilled to get the same teacher Hannah had last year and was very happy to have her friend from Kindergarten back in class with her. I'm adjusting to being on a schedule again and hoping to one day have my house clean...

Miracles do happen

Well, it's official. We are finally buying a house. It's only been a short 2 years and we have found the home of our dreams. OK it's not really our dream home but a while ago we decided that we needed to find one of two options.

1. A house we love with a mortgage we like.
2. A mortgage we love and a house that we like.

So ultimately we found the house that we liked with the mortgage that we loved. Here are the specs.

1530 square feet
3 bedroom 2 bathroom
the tiniest 2 car garage you can find
decent back yard

The cool thing is that it's full of furniture so we get to have a fun yard sale and we have even acquired a 42' plasma TV and some nice patio furniture.

So overall we are excited, mostly to be done looking and to finally have our own house. Yay for us!

The winds of change blew away

Still no house. We had 3 very probable options (that's 3 more than we've had in the last 2 years of looking) and within a week they were all crossed off as options. Crazily enough in this buyers market, we put in an offer on a house and within 4 days of it listing it had 6 offers. We can't win. But our hopes are high, something will come. I'm sure of it, we will find a house... sometime... in the next 5 years...

A trip to Utah

I went to UT last week for Forrest's graduation and his baby's blessing. Little Davis is adorable! I have no pictures of any of it except for the day we spent at Thanksgiving Point. Mom, Alice, and Melanee and I went to see the tulip festival and I met up with a friend of mine that I haven't seen for about 4-5 years. I can't believe I forgot to take some pictures with her! Anyhow, it was really fun and so beautiful. The weather was perfect and we had such a good time.

This is my favorite picture. Their was a girl there doing her wedding pictures and Bridgett couldn't stay away. She followed her around and watched, I don't think she could have loved anything more.

Bridgett turned 5!

She was soo excited to turn 5. When she woke up Madison informed her that she "didn't look like a 5 year old." I just wonder what kind of transformation needed to take place for that to happen.

She had a great Birthday, we had cake and ice cream with the family and she was very excited (a lot more than mom) about the make-up she got. It was the only thing she wanted besides jewelry and I felt like it would be a little mean to not get her some. Turns out I chose the kind that is very hard to get off. The next day the girls looked like they had sunburned faces because we couldn't get all the pink off. Bridgett just kept putting it on and taking it off and putting more on. She really did love it a lot. The good news is that it was all used up in about 2 days.

Desi is well taken care of

I found Desmond in his swing this way one day. As I took away the flowers I found about 3 other toys. Collin is always concerned.

Easter

Just a quick picture of the girls in their dresses. Amazingly, this was the best shot we got. We had a fun Easter although we woke up to snow. We had an easter egg hunt on Saturday and then dinner on Sunday with Alice and my mom and dad. Somehow I ended up getting no pictures of any of it.

Bridgett must be a tired girl

Bridgett plays outside a lot. One day she hadn't come in for a while so I went to check on her and found this. I think she was waiting for the neighbor girl to come over and just fell asleep. Doesn't that nice piece of wood look so comfy?

Desmond's Blessing

We had Desmond's blessing on March 15th. We were lucky enough to have Aunt Ang, Alice, Lesley, and Lindsey and their families and Nana and Papa and Grandpa and Grandma all in attendance. We had a great time and were so glad to everyone join us.

The winds of change...

As many of you know, we have been looking diligently for a house since we moved here to no avail. Before I go on let me say that we still haven't found one but things are looking up. One of the factors in our house buying has been that we wanted to stay in our ward. We have a very small ward and I figured that at some point they would change the bounderies because there are other wards in the Stake that are bursting at the seams. My worry in the back of my head was that we would go to all the trouble of staying in the ward only to have half our friends gone within the year because they moved the bounderies. Well last Sunday John came home from his meetings and said they were having a meeting at 3:30 to change the ward bounderies. I was school girl giddy. It was one of the last factors to fall into place for us to buy a house. I won't mention that John knew on Friday night and didn't tell me! Anyway, it turns out that we lost only a small portion of our ward and gained a whole lot more! So now our house buying options have opened up a little more and now I can buy a house without wondering about what the wards will look like in a year.

The reality is that I still probably won't find the house that I want but now we're reconsidering building because land prices have dropped. The prospect is very exciting and very scary at the same time. I love the idea of getting the house I want but then again what if I pictured it wrong and I end up hating it? Or what if we do build our dream house and then have to move for some reason (we're not planning on moving but you never know)? Anyway, it would also take a long time to build but at least there would be a light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm just glad that the stars finally seem to be aligning for us.

Pay it forward

Here's how it goes: the first three people to post a comment on this post will receive a handmade gift from me (Robin or John)! It could be something crafty, something crazy or if you live close enough to me, even something edible. What it will be and when it will arrive (sometime this year) is a total surprise. The catch is that you must participate as well. Before you leave your comment, type up a pay-it-forward post on your blog to keep the fun going. Then come back and let me know you are going to play. Then you can just sit back and wait for the arrival of your gift! (Please make sure I have a way to contact you, or you might be waiting a long time.)

How do I love thee...

This is a lot of pictures but I had to post these for posterity sake. This Valentine's Day Madison decided to hand make valentines for each of the kids in her class. What I loved the most was the personalized messages on each of them. She's at the perfect age where she's old enough to be able to write little notes but not too old to get embarrassed about what they say. If you click on the pictures you'll get a much bigger image and it will be alot easier to read them. I found it hilarious that about 75% of them mention hair. Maybe it's because her whole life people have commented about her hair.

Some pictures of Desmond & Collin

Here's a couple of pictures of Desmond.


This is Collin adapting to his new life. I was on the phone one day and holding Desmond so instead of waiting for me to lay down with him for his nap he crawled into Desmond's swing and went right to sleep.


I just thought this was really cute.

A whole new world

After a couple of months of many people telling me that Madison couldn't see anything, I finally took her in for an eye exam. Last year I took her for one and her vision was 20/60 which the Dr. thought didn't warrant glasses. I figured "how much could her vision have changed, really?" Well turns out it changed a whole lot. Her vision is now 20/200. Needless to say she got glasses this time. When we picked them up, the lady put them on and Madison said "mom, everything looks so different." Poor girl. But now she has them and she loves being able to see and frankly I think their adorable. Incidentally, they are basically a miniature version of my glasses.

One week ago today

So it's been one week since I went into labor. It all started around dinner time. About 5:00 Wednesday evening I noticed that I was having contractions pretty regularly. I'd been having maybe about 5 a day for the last month but these kept coming and were more like 5-6 and hour. They weren't painful but it made me think that I should probably do all the last minute things. As the night wore on it became apparent that I would end up in the hospital sometime that night. By about 10:00 the contractions were getting a lot more painful so I labored at home for a while and at 1:30 we dropped of the kids at Alice's and headed to the hospital. It was perfect I got all checked in, they handed me the gown, I got dressed in it - twice (I put it on backwards the first time) and then I went to sit on the bed and my water broke. At this point it was 3:00 and I was at a five. By 4:00 my epidural was under way and at 6:00 I was at an eight. Everyone figured I would have the baby around 8:00. But then everything halted. I stayed at an 8 for another 6 hours. They gave me pitossin to get my contractions to be harder in the hopes that it would help me progress. By noon I was fully dilated but Desmond was still quite high up. We tried pushing but it didn't do anything. My doctor checked me at some point and determined that his head was cocked to the side and it was preventing him from coming into position. We figured we could just keep going and hope that he moved into position. About 3:00 my Dr. came back and said that we would try pushing again and if that didn't work he would use the vacuum and then if that didn't work we would have to do a C-Section. At that point I didn't care what we did I was done. We got all geared up to push and after one push John, the nurse, and the Dr. all exclaimed wow, great, etc. After 2 pushes John said "the head is out!" Next push he was born. We were all shocked and I couldn't have been happier. What a great ending to the very long process. I've never had the pushing go so well and it's always my least favorite part. So although the whole process was very long and I had a little break down about half-way through I feel like I can't complain because the end went so quick. Little Desmond came out looking a little rough and had a side cone head but he was in great shape otherwise. Throughout the process he never showed any signs of distress and seemed to be just a happy little camper hanging out in there.

So far I've been taking it very easy and figure I'll just allow myself to heal before taking on life fully again. I sit around a lot and spend a lot of time feeding Desmond and holding him. My mom decided at the last minute to come into town to help out and it has been so wonderful. She takes care of the other kids and the house so that I can just rest. It's also nice to have company around so I don't start feeling too cabin feverish. We'll see how I do when she leaves but for now I'm just taking advantage of having her here.

Desmond is doing great. He's a great nurser and does great at sleeping off and on. Enough to feel like I get some occasional good sleep. He's not a cryer yet and he's a great snuggler. So far it has been a good week.

This is what Collin likes to do with the baby. Overall he is so good with him. He frequently comes up and just pats him softly on the head and talks to him.


P.S. Many people have asked where we got the name Desmond. Apparently there is a show called "lost" with a character on it named Desmond. We don't really know anything about that but we both really like the Beatles song "OB-LA-DI, OB-LA-DA". It talks about Desmond and Molly and we just fell in love with the name.

It could also be that we've watched every episode from a certain show and think there's a guy on there with a really great accent and fantastic hair and we just HAD to name our son after him. Or maybe we just liked his name.

2 + 2 = 4

2 girls and 2 boys and we are so happy to have our new little Desmond Parker John Holman.

More on the story will be forthcoming but he was born at 3:33 pm on January 22nd. He was 7lbs 9oz (our smallest baby yet - I thought for sure the whole pregnancy that he would be the biggest.) He was 20 1/2 inches long and he's a fantastic baby so far.

The girls are loving having him around and are constantly asking questions like "why is his skin so dark? will he grow up light?" "Was Collin's belly button thing the same color?" "can I hold him for an hour?" They love him and he happily lets them hold him all the time. Collin is a little unsure what the heck is going on but thoroughly enjoys pulling his pacifier out and putting it back in. Which incidentally Desmond loves the pacifier and is by far the most adept at sucking on it than any of my other kids. So far he's a great sleeper and eater.

Minutes after he was born. He's a little bruised and battered but still a cutie.

This is the "pacifier" from the hospital. They don't have any so they make one by putting a sticker on a bottle nipple. He didn't seem to mind at all.

This is an attempt to show you his hair. He and Bridgett are the only ones to be born with a significant amount of hair.

It's a ...!!

Oh wait, we don't actually know yet. I'm still sticking around waiting to have this baby. The truth is I finally feel mentally ready to have it and I also feel like I have some affairs in order, particularly my house. At least it is to more of a degree than it has been in the past week or so. I went to the Dr. today and sorry if this is too much info for some but he said I was "at a 2 and still pretty thick." He did strip my membranes but he didn't seem too hopeful about it working. He said the fact that I've had other kids increases my chances but I don't think I was too far progressed so we'll see what happens. Obviously it didn't work for me today since it's been about 8 hours since he did it but I'm still hopeful it will happen in the next few days. I was totally ok with it not happening today or not so I feel like I'm in a good place. The bummer is he's going out of town this weekend so hopefully it won't happen then. We also set my inducement date for next Wednesday so I know I'll have a baby in 10 days at least. I've set an inducement date with all of my kids and not been induced onced so we'll see if that holds true. Anyway, it's crazy to see that I have only 4 days until my due date, maybe I'll actually have a baby early this time!

My Grandma, Florence Irene McCormick

My grandmother passed away 3 nights ago. She was 98 1/2 years old and had lived a great life. Although she had a rough last week dealing with shingles and a broken ankle she died very peacefully in her sleep. As a child we spent almost every summer making the 3 day drive to Portland to visit her and my Grandpa. We loved going to her house and playing in her attic bedroom and walking to 7-11 to get slurpees. I remember she always had cookies in her cookie jar and her bedroom dresser was always picture perfect with everything arranged on it perfectly. She was a hard worker and always kept her house so clean. She only had a claw foot bathtub with no shower so we always got to take baths and thought it was great fun.

She was married at 24 and a widow for 24 years and married for 50 years. She was always really close to her sister, Ethel, and they have lived together off and on for all their lives. Aunt Ethel never married and they have been taking care of each other their whole lives. They had a great relationship and you can really tell how much they care for each other. One year we spent Thanksgiving at my Grandma's house. We had a wonderful dinner and had sat down for some delicious pumpkin pie that Grandma and Aunt Ethel had worked on together. I took my first bite and wasn't sure what was going on but it wasn't very good. With each bite I included more and more whip cream so that I could get it down. All of us were eating it and finally my Grandma sat down for her piece. After the first bite she exclaimed "Ethel didn't you put the sugar in this!" Aunt Ethel quickly replied "I though you put it in!" We all laughed and gratefully pushed away our plates.

I have a lot of good memories of my Grandma and am happy to have known her. I'm glad we spent a lot of vacations visiting her so that we could develop a relationship with her.

The day we found out that she had passed away Madison was saying her night prayer and this is how it went. "Please bless Grandma McCormick that she can do good in heaven. We're thankful that we can all die and be resurrected and come back to earth with perfect bodies and everyone can be nice to us including all the animals."

37 1/2 weeks

Because the most frequently asked question to me these days is "how are you feeling/doing?" I decided that I would just answer - truthfully. My answer always is just "good." So here it is. I feel like I have a big, very active baby in me and to be honest I'm not sure that I'm ready yet to have it come out. Generally at this point I'm chomping at the bit but right now 2 weeks sounds pretty soon. Physically I feel fine. Yes, I'm uncomfortable and not sleeping well at all and my back does hurt frequently but overall I feel fine. Where the real problem lies is in the fact that I have NO desire to do anything. I don't want to clean my house, cook any meals, go to a store, pull out baby clothes, etc. I think I could be content to just sit on the couch and do nothing (except eventually my legs would get really restless and my back would really start to hurt!) Anyway, I'm hoping this is temporary and goes away quickly because it's not really helping me to get ready for this baby.
I went to the Dr. today. In a nutshell he said he would strip my membranes at 39 weeks and schedule an inducement for sometime between 40-41 weeks that day also. So basically by Jan 30th I'll for sure be at home with a new bouncing baby. Had he said he would strip my membranes today I probably would have just done it but he didn't and there really wasn't any kind of let down feeling. Overall I think it's time for me to fully embrace having a newborn around and do what I can to be prepared. Maybe tomorrow...
And that folks is how I'm feeling/doing.