Brayden's Baptism

So very proud of this boy!! He is good. Pretty much always. He is kind, helpful, creative, smart, sensitive, athletic, loving, and cute! It has been a joy and pleasure being his mom. I love you Brady.

These are so incredibly out of order, but oh well, at least I am blogging. These are all the Thomas cousins minus two, Rory was with Jeanette who was home sick, and Conner who refused to get in the shot. Have I ever mentioned how much I love the age of 3?

Here he is sitting with his Aunt Shayla. It is a good thing is so dang cute.

Jason is keeping cool under the palm tree.

OK, I really remember how much I dislike Blogger for uploading photos. I tried at least 5 times to get these pictures up before. It finally worked tonight. We were able to baptize Brayden the first weekend in June. It turned out that my entire family was able to attend, with the exception of a sick Jeanette and a Jeanette dependent baby Rory. It seldom happens that we can all get together from our various homes, but we gathered to show our love for this woman below. Our Nana Molly, as my kids call her because she had a dog named Molly, came down from Washington to see us all. We went to the mobile home park she owns to do some work and squeezed in a baptism. It was a great way to start a Saturday morning. I am grateful to Bishop Wolcott for giving his time for us, and to Glenn and Wenona for letting us use their pool. This is Nana, or Sallie Porter, and her longtime friend Wilma Lawrence at the baptism. Wilma was a neighbor to Nana when they lived in South Pasadena when my mom was a teenager. This evidently was Wilma's first baptism.

Here are some of the cousins checking out the pool that the baptism was taking place in.

All these cute little bodies. It sure was a fun weekend with 14 of the 15 Thomas cousins all together.

No Girls Allowed...except Nana

So years ago when my nephew Jefferson was born, my mom went up and painted a wonderful mural on his bedroom wall. Unfortunately, they moved and couldn't take it with them. I have always wanted her to do something for my kids, but I have always been afraid they would outgrow it too quick and all her efforts be for naught. Ever since we moved into this house, the boys have wanted a mural on their wall of a tree house with a sign that says...No Girls Allowed. So mom came up and did this.

Thanks mom, we love it. I am grateful for your talents and your willingness to share them.

Mackenzie's pregnancy

I miscarried in 2008, it was the first time I ever had. I never felt right about that pregnancy, and looking back I know why. I was working at an elementary school teaching kindergartener's to read. I had told everyone that I was pregnant and that I would not be coming back next year. The day after my last day of work, I had an OB appointment and we couldn't find the heartbeat. I had an ultrasound and was given the news that the baby had died. I was 11 weeks into the pregnancy, but by the baby's measurements it had died 4 weeks previous. I could either take drugs to try and pass it on my own, or go in for a D & C. Being the frugal person I am, I opted for the drugs and to go through it at home. It was painful, mostly emotionally, and over relatively fast. It was harder than I thought it was going to be.

Seven months later, I got pregnant again. This time it felt right. When I was 6 weeks along, I got an overwhelming feeling that I was done after this one. Because I had gestational diabetes with the previous two boys, I got tested early for it during this pregnancy. After the first test, it came back with suspicious numbers, rather than take the 3 hour test, I told them to sign me up for the diabetic program. For some reason, the diabetes made me really angry this time. It was really hard to deal with it. My numbers were all over the place. I was back on shots 4 - 5 times a day. I bottomed out several times with this go round, this was a first and it freaked me out when it first happened. My fasting numbers never got under control, that didn't surprise me, but it frustrated my counselors.

I was due in September, the 14th was my original due date, but they moved it to the 28th after an ultrasound. Other than the diabetes, this pregnancy was fairly easy. I could tell I am older though, my joints don't work as well as they used to. I made it through the summer pretty well. We went camping for the first time since I was a teen ager. We went with the Miller's and Phillips'. We went to Lake Nacimiento. We had a lot of fun. We crashed the boat on a rock jetty that was not marked and only under a few inches of water. Luckily it didn't do too much damage and Justin thought ahead and brought the extra propeller. The guys changed it out and we were back in business. Dan, Justin, Conner, Jacob, and I went out for a quick run while Lisa took the rest of the kids on a hike. We were about 100 yards off the shore when we discovered that we were in super shallow water. We had to get out and push for quite a distance. That was a lot of fun when I wasn't wearing a bathing suit, and was 6 months pregnant and falling into sink holes in the ground. We saw lots of wildlife that were not afraid of us.

The boat had to go into the shop when we got back for 2 weeks, and then our friends borrowed it. When they got back, I took the kids to Washington for our annual visit to Nana's. We had a great time. I will post about that later with pictures.

The rest of the summer was spent swimming and hanging around at home. I had no desire to be at the lake when it was so hot and I was so fat!!

School started in August and we began to plan for Mack's arrival. We were trying to be tricky and plan for her induction so that we could maximize Justin's time off without taking too many days off. She had plans of her own. The sunday before her induction date, I remember thinking how done I was. I remember telling Heavenly Father that I was done. He must have felt badly for me because the next morning, just like when Maryn was born, when I rolled over to get out of bed and go to the bathroom my water broke!!! SO for the next two hours, I did housework to get ready for me to go to the hospital. Makes sense right?

Seriously, how can you not love this face?

This is Mackenzie, the love of our lives. She is an awesome baby, and we love, love, love having her around. She has been one of our best and happiest babies. She is now 7 months old, and our family is complete. I will tell more of her birth story and all that stuff later, I just wanted to see if I could still figure out how to post pictures, blogger is still slow as ever, and I don't know if I can figure out how to post more than 4 photos at a time. Jen, you are the genius at that, maybe you can give me a tutorial.

Is anyone there?

I keep checking back to my blog to see if Lisa has updated it yet. She hasn't. I am thinking about dropping her as a friend. I mean come on, it has been over a year already. You would too. I have decided that I would begin blogging again. I am sure that no one even cares any more except Shannon, and I know this only because she told me she checks. So Shannon, you get rewarded. Mostly because my computer remembers my log in credentials still, I do not. I also decided that since I don't journal any more *gasp*, I need to have some sort of record of my life. You would think that having a baby in the past year would have made it here. NOPE, not even a mention of the pregnancy even. I stink. Here is my commitment, I will blog at least one time each week. I need to catch up. I can't always promise pictures because we have 3 different computers that hold this years pictures, and some don't talk to the internet any more. I am technically challenged in trying to get the said photos off. The other computer that has pictures doesn't know my log in credentials, so when I get that info from Lisa, because she remembers, I will post from that computer. So if any one cares, I am back.