Taryn's Photo Shoots

With all the holidays and birthdays at the end of the year, I decided I'd better keep up on my posts. So here are a bunch of pictures of Taryn in her blessing dress. I tried three different times to take pictures in hopes that I could get a really good one to add to our wall of each of the girls in their blessing dresses. Here are some of my favorites:

Happy girl.

 A view of the entire dress.

 Wondering how much longer.

 My favorite - I just love her expression.

 This is the one I'll use for our wall. She's in the same position as all the other girls, and just as adorable.

 I've also added just a few other pictures of Taryn over the past couple months. I can't help but just take pictures of her whenever the mood strikes, so here are a few:

On her first Sunday, ready for church.

 After she started sitting up (kind of) with the help of the boppy.

 With her big sister Aubrey who still asks to hold her all the time. So cute!

 And finally, getting ready for Christmas in her "I Love Santa" outfit. She's 2 months old in this picture and over 11 pounds now. Man, time flies.

We love our Taryn!

Taryn's Blessing and a Thanksgiving Wolf

Taryn was blessed on November 20. Tyler's parents and sister and family came from Utah to be here with us for the blessing and the Thanksgiving holiday. We are very thankful to have a wonderful extended family who love and support us.

Here's our new family of six:

The proud parents; and Taryn did so well all day sleeping through most of it.

The cousins - all those girls and one boy. They had a great time together all week.

We spent our Thanksgiving week with Tyler's family and we were able to spend two days at the Great Wolf Lodge. It was awesome. I loved the picture spots.

The Great Wolf Lodge is a huge hotel with an indoor water park. Going to a water park in November is so awesome! Our hotel room was down "Pixie's Hall" which was so fitting for all the little girls in our families.

The entire floor was decorated with the floor theme. This picture was taken right outside our door.

We all really enjoyed the water park. We spent two days on slides, lazy rivers, wave pools, and avoiding the huge dumping bucket.

Once Aubrey tried the kiddie slides, we couldn't get her to stop.

On Thanksgiving day, the kids went on a scavenger hunt walk with Grandma and Grandpa so we pulled them all together for a quick picture.

It was a great Thanksgiving spent with family.

And here's a preview of the next blog entry:

Taryn's blessing dress photo shoot.

Halloween 2011

The holidays are upon us and starting them all out is Halloween. The girls have been waiting for Halloween for a long time, mainly because whenever we talked about Taryn coming it was always in reference to Halloween like "the baby will be here before Halloween." However being pregnant I never got around to sewing costumes which is my preferred method, so a couple weeks before Halloween and right before my due date, I decided to go online and find some costumes that would be easy yet still homemade. Here's what I found:

Abby was a Greek statue. We liked the grape crown and shoulder piece. Abby enjoyed telling people she was a Greek Goddess.

We made some adjustments to Tessa's costume. I used a pattern to turn the hat I found online into Toadette's hat from Mario Brothers. Tessa plays the Wii a lot so our family knows all the characters but many people did not know who she was supposed to be. We still thought it was pretty awesome.

Here's a picture so you can compare. We thought it turned out perfect and I was so happy that Tessa was excited to wear it even after it was complete and she saw how huge it was going to be on her head.

Aubrey was a mouse. She kept going back and forth between wanting to wear it and not, but luckily once it was complete, she was excited to dress up. And she loved that she had a tail!

Taryn didn't do any Halloween festivities being only 2 weeks and all, but I did dress her up in her most animal-like outfit. I thought she could have been a giraffe. Abby thought it looked more like cow print, but either way - she's cute.

Here are the girls at our Ward Trunk or Treat. They got lots of candy of course. Aubrey was very impressive; she was not afraid to walk right up to the cars and stick out her bucket and say "trick or treat." She knew she'd get candy so she's wasn't shy at all.

Abby was very excited to decorate the house this year, so the girls talked me into going to the dollar store where we found some decorations. They really wanted a huge spider but a small blowup one was all we could find.

The girls decided to pose as mummies in front of the mummy we got. (And Abby made those pumpkins and hung them herself.)

We also spent some time making ghosts from suckers and tissues and hanging them around the house. Here are a few where you can also see the witch we bought at the dollar store.

We spent a family home evening night carving pumpkins. Grandpa had to help clean out the pumpkin for Tessa because she thought it was too gross.

We found Disney stencils online so Tessa's pumpkin is Rapunzel from Tangled, Aubrey's is Tinkerbell, and Abby picked a witch from our carving kit.

On Halloween night, we decided to walk the mall and trick or treat at the stores instead of wandering around outside in neighborhoods we weren't familiar with. It was so fun because we saw more people and costumes that way.

And they had lots of decorations around to pose by that made for some really cute pictures.

Happy Halloween!!

Introducing Taryn Margaret

We finally have our baby! We have been waiting for so long. Here's our story of how Taryn finally came to be with our family.

I was expecting this baby to come at least a week earlier than her due date because each of my other girls have come progressively earlier and Aubrey was a full week early. Also, Aubrey came quickly. With her I started having contractions at 5:00 or so (just a couple hours after I had had an appointment); and we were headed to the hospital at 11:00 that night and she was born about 1 or so in the morning. I just assumed this baby would follow that pattern since it is my fourth kid and all.

So with my due date as October 15th, I had an appointment scheduled for October 6th and I thought this would be the day. I'd have my appointment, go home, contractions would start and I'd have her by that night or the next day. Well, she had her own plans. At my appointment my doctor said I was moving along and she even said maybe she'd see me in the next couple days. In my mind I was thinking, I'll see you tonight! So I went home and I did have some contractions but by that night they had become so sporadic I wasn't even trying to keep track of them. Friday came and that night I had about an hour or two of regular contractions but I ended up falling asleep and they weren't bad enough to keep me awake. Over the next couple days I would have random contractions but nothing regular. I would go to sleep hoping that that would be the night I wake up having full-out contractions. This was becoming more and more frustrating because it was nothing like any of my other kids. With all other three I would start having contractions and they would progressively get harder and faster and we would eventually go into the hospital and I'd have a baby!

By this point I was hoping for anything to move this labor along. I was looking forward to the weather front that passed through and then to the full moon that came, but still no baby. By Wednesday, October 12th, I was sadly convinced that I was headed to another doctor's appointment which was scheduled for Thursday. I at least had the reassurance that my doctor would give me some answers: either to tell me I was progressing well or to at least schedule an induction date. At my appointment, she did both. She said I was then dilated to a 4 (I was a 2-3 the previous week) and she said I would be favorable for an induction if needs be, so I was scheduled with the hospital to be induced Monday morning (at 4:30 am!!) if I didn't go into labor before then. I left super excited because I had an end in sight. I would have this baby no later than Monday morning, October 17th.

Luckily, my contractions after that appointment started up again and finally they didn't stop. By that evening, I was not able to sleep, and I was making Tyler time them for me. By 2 in the morning, they were pretty regular and at 2:30 we headed to the hospital. Unfortunately, the contractions were not as bad as I remember them being when we were headed to the hospital with Aubrey, and sure enough when they checked me at the hospital, I was still only a 4 and the nurse could tell my contractions weren't "too bad." The on-call doctor suggested that I walk the hospital for an hour to see if my condition changed, and I was a little saddened because that's what I had to do with Abby, my first, so I was feeling kind of let down, that I was a fourth time mom and I was being asked to walk like a first-time mom. But luckily during that hour my contractions got really bad so I was admitted to the hospital around 5 am after our hour was up; I got my epidural and I was ready to have this baby! My doctor was actually at the hospital during our hour walking, but to let us rest with the epidural, she didn't come to break my water until almost 9 am. And Taryn was born at 9:45 am on October 14th (only one day early). So without further ado, let me introduce Taryn Margaret!

She weighed 7 pounds 11 ounces (same as me when I was born) and was 20 inches long.

Our first picture with mom, dad, and Taryn.

The nurse made three extra copies of Taryn's footprints (as seen above her head). One for each of her big sisters to have as their own. We thought that was really sweet of her to do for them.

Before leaving the hospital, we took some pictures of Taryn at one of their photo kiosks and they turned out so cute!

Finally, a picture of Taryn without a hat so you can see all her dark hair - a feature all of my kids have had that I love.

The big sisters and daddy bought the stuffed giraffe for Taryn which they brought when they came to visit. I love having the picture to show a size reference so as she gets older and bigger we can remember she once was as small as her stuffed animal.

After she finally got her first bath, they brought her back wearing the standard hospital hat but with a cute bow.

The girls were visiting when Taryn got back from her bath. They all wanted to hold her. This is the first picture of our four girls together.

Abby has been an awesome helper and a great big sister.

Once at home, the girls still beg to hold her. Here's a favorite of mine because Taryn has her eyes open and because Tessa is so adorable.

Aubrey even loves to have her turn holding Taryn. When she does, she sits and stares at her and says over and over, "Hi, baby Taryn. Hi, baby Taryn."

This is how you can find Taryn most of the time - asleep. At least she likes the blanket I crocheted for her.

Tyler's parents drove out as soon as they heard Taryn was born, so they arrived the night after we returned home from the hospital. We loved having them here. The other girls REALLY loved having them here too.

I thought this picture was so funny because all three girls have their eyes closed. :)

Tyler has said that his favorite part of the newborn stage is having them curl up into a ball and sleep on his chest. I caught a picture of this and it's now one of my favorite pictures ever.

And I thought her outfit was too cute not to take a picture with her in this pose.

And finally a picture from today. She's 12 days old. Love this little bundle of joy. Welcome to our family, Taryn. We love you!