Update

Well, the countdown is on! My mom gets to come and stay with me in 5 weeks! She will be here for 6 weeks! Some of my siblings don't think that she will stay that long, but that is what her plane ticket says. I don't get to see her very often, so I think that is all evens out. Our little girl should arrive in 6 weeks. I have never made it to 37 weeks gestation and I really hope I don't with this one. My dear friends are also throwing me a baby shower that my mom will get to come to as well.

We got the news last week that Chad's company that he works for changed health insurances! We were not happy about this. All of us had to change Drs. except for me. The only reason why I didn't was because I am so far along. If I were two weeks behind from what I am, I would have too. I also would have had to change hospitals that I am going to deliver at. The hospital they wanted me to deliver at, none of my Drs. have privileges at. We absolutely loved our kids' pediatrician, but had to change him as well. The worst part of it is that we had already reached our out-of-pocket maximum with the old health insurance and now we will have to meet another one for the new one. I hate all the politics!

Brahnson is now over 6 feet tall and pretty proud of that. He is 14 and loves basketball. He has found quite an interest in cooking. He likes to help me in the kitchen and create his own dishes that are usually desserts. He continues to stay close to his sister Sydnee. She has him wrapped around her little finger! He has to be careful, because she can grow impatient with him. He is going to be going to high school next year and is really looking forward to that.

Camren is 13 and just earned his rank as a star scout! He loves the outdoors and has learned to carve bows and arrows with his knife. He is very kind to his younger brother Jorden, who likes to shoot his bows and arrows, sometimes without asking. He is looking forward to us going to Utah and being able to go to Scout Camp.

Tori is little Miss Popular. She has friends call her almost everyday to play with her. She has a great ability to include everyone. Her teacher says that everyone wants to work in her group. Within the last few months, she and Sydnee have really formed a tight bond.That is a good and bad thing, because Sydnee wants to hang out with Tori when she is with her friends. Tori loves having girls' movie night with her mom. Our favorite is Pride and Prejudice, the six hour version.

Jorden is a happy kid! He is loving 1st grade and is preparing to be baptized later this year. He is doing really well in reading and math. His teacher says that he has a wonderful scientific mind. His older siblings are astonished at the things that he can read and the math that he is doing. His favorite video game is Zelda.

Sydnee has a unique relationship with everyone of her siblings. She loves them all. She is going to a preschool that has 7 autistic kids in it and she and another little girl are the peers. Her teachers tell me that she is a great friend and comforts those that are having a hard time. Next year she gets to go to a 4K kindergarten and gets to get bussed both ways. It will be everyday for about 3 hours. She is excited to get to ride the bus!

Chad is still working at what used to be Percipenz Technology. They changed their name to Forte Research. It is right down the street from us and he doesn't have any kind of commute. He is serving on the scout committee in our ward and is also Camren's Sunday School Teacher.

I am staying busy at home. Waiting for our next one to arrive. These last few weeks have gone really slow for me. I fell in Costco a few weeks ago and did something to my left side. It is hard for me to walk at night if I have been up a lot during the day. My Dr. says that my joints are softening in my pelvic area anyway to get ready for delivering and my fall probably just aggravated it. There is really nothing to do, but wait until the baby comes. I see other babies and wonder if I am ready to start all over again. I am currently serving in the Relief Society presidency as the activities councilor.

Our whole family is excited for this next little one to come. She is already so loved. We feel so blessed to be able to have her in our family. Her arrival will probably be my next blog post. Here is the latest picture. I think she is going to have a look of her own. She definitely has the "Sampson" nose. Other than that, I can't tell who she will look like. We will just have to wait and see. :)

Getting Closer!

We are getting so excited for this little girl to come to our family! We had some really cool pictures at the the last ultra sound. Brahnson, 14, looked at them and immediately exclaimed, "She looks like me! Those are my lips!" That is true, but dad is the one that gave them to her, because he has Chad's lips. It was funny. She also looks like she is going to follow in her sisters' footsteps by being a thumb sucker.

Both my girls loved their thumb. Sydnee who is almost 4 is currently trying to break the habit right now. She went to her first dentist appointment and had no cavities! She loved it and when the hygienist asked her if she had any questions, she looked up at her and said, "I love you." It was very cute! The dentist did explain to her that she needed to do her best to stop sucking her thumb so that her teeth will be straight. She is trying and does better on most days than not.

Our little girl is already 1 pound and 7 ounces. She is very wiggly and I can already tell that she is going to be a night owl and not a morning person. Jorden keeps asking how many months left. He doesn't care about the weeks because it would be a bigger number. He just wants to know in months. I told him three and he was excited.

We have been discussing names and some of them have been, Michaela, Katrina, Jocelyn, Alyssa, and some others. With our track record, the only name that we have kept that we thought of before the baby was born was Victoria (Tori). All the others, we thought of at the hospital, so we will see what happens!

Getting Even

It has been a long while since I last blogged. I need to update this quite a bit. I really don't have time now and I don't have all the pictures that I need. However, I did want to share this. We are going to be welcoming a new little girl to our family in May. Everything looks good and I am feeling good. We had an ultra sound and they said that the placenta looks healthy and it is on the back of the uterus, so I am able to feel the movements earlier and more often. All of us, except for Chad, were expecting a boy. We were pleasantly surprised with finding out that we have another girl. My daughters were especially pleased. We are so grateful to be able to have her in our family and look forward to the day we can hold and snuggle her. Here is a picture of the latest ultra sound.

Our Vacation

We have had such a fun summer. My mom came at the beginning of July and then drove back to Utah with me and my three youngest kids. It was 20 hours altogether. We stopped at the halfway point in North Platte, NE. We went to this place called Fort Cody. It was pretty cool with all the little figurines that we saw and it had a lot of stuff from Buffalo Bill Cody. It was a nice place to get out and stretch our legs. The place we stayed didn't have a pool, so I went to Walmart and got something for everyone to keep themselves entertained. We had a good breakfast and then continued on our way. We got to my mom's house at around 5. The kids were really good on the way there.
Sydnee has a cousin that is a few months younger than she is and they got along really well, once they got to know each other. My older kids came during the next week with my brother-in-law on his semi. They were able to make a lot of reconnection's with friends from when we lived there.
One of the highlights of our trips was that Tori and I got to go to Cedar City to the Shakespearean Festival. This is a tradition with my family. It was Tori's first year and she had a blast. We saw "The Merchant of Venice", "Macbeth", "Much Ado About Nothing", and "Pride and Prejudice". We usually only go to the three main Shakespeare plays, but my mom really wanted to see Pride and Prejudice that we went a day early. It was so great to have that extra day. I wish we could do that every year and not necessarily go to a play on the extra day. One of the funny things that happened, Tori brought all her shoes that she has been wearing that are a size 4-5 and her feet wouldn't fit into any of them. We went to the shoe store and had her foot measured and she is a size 8! I couldn't believe it! We had to go and get her all new shoes.
It was so much fun spending time at my mom's house and my sister Kim's house. I loved spending time with all of my family. I really felt that I bonded with my family in ways that I haven't before. It actually made leaving all that harder. All of our kids got a long, we played games, watched shows, and hung out. It doesn't sound all that exciting, but it was one of the best times I have ever had with my family. It was nice to be around my in-laws too. It was fun to be there when my sister-in-law had her baby. I was able to hold him and realized that I had forgotten how tiny newborns are.
As a last minute decision, I was able to attend Education Week with my mom and two of my sisters. I truly believe that Heavenly Father wanted me to go to that to hear certain messages that I heard. I went to one class that talked about Zion vs. Babylon. Do we have more Zion homes or Babylon homes? Are we living a life that puts us in Zion or Babylon? It was really good. Another one talked about how we need to teach our kids to be achievers and leaders among their peers. My favorite one was the one that Sheri Dew presented. She talked about the importance of being a righteous influence in our lives. That is so perfect to teach my kids about while they are around their friends that aren't LDS , but also in our own home. I absolutely loved it. I hope Brahnson can go to education week next year when he will be 14. I wish that he could have gone this year, but he missed the cut off by a week and a half. I really hope that my husband can be with me next year.
I then had to drive home with all five kids by myself. We stopped in NE. again. It was a little more contentious then on the drive up, but we made it. We continued home the next day and it was so good to see my husband. I was gone for 5 weeks and we really missed each other.
I am so grateful that I was able to go. I am very grateful to my sister-in-law Jen for being willing to have my kids at their house for two weeks while I was elsewhere.
This vacation came right at the right time for me. I had just the right experiences and now I am ready to move forward with everything. The only bad thing about this vacation, apart from not having my husband with me, is that I forgot my camera! Hopefully, I'll be able to get some pictures from people that were there with me.
I am looking forward to the kids going back to school and resuming my life here. I don't know why I need to live away from my family in Utah, but I trust Heavenly Father and His plan for me. I am already looking forward to going back next year. My kids are too!

#6 will still come, just a little bit later.

I am so grateful for the tender mercies that Heavenly Father gives me. Last April, I found a really good deal on a flight for my mom to come and visit me. I had a very strong prompting from the spirit that I needed to get that flight for her on July 7th. I thought it was because she could use a change of scenery while my dad is out of the country. I never thought that she needed to be here for me to give me the extra help and support that I needed.

July 8th, the day after she got here, she came with me to my regular OB appointment. I was 17 1/2 weeks along. I was really hoping to be able to talk my Dr. into giving me an ultrasound to see if the baby was a boy or a girl. I was going to be going out of town and my normal 20 week ultra sound was going to have to be 23 week ultra sound. I really wanted one before I went out of town. The nurse came into the room and did all my vitals and then tried to see if we could hear the baby's heartbeat. She couldn't find it. She had another nurse come in and she couldn't find it either. They were going to have to give me an ultra sound to see if they could see a heartbeat. The Dr. came in and asked all her questions and then afterward had me go in to the ultrasound room. It was then that she saw that there was no heartbeat or movement of any kind. I was shocked! I have had a miscarriage before, but had had cramping and bleeding to go with it. I have had none of that.

I was so glad that my mom was there with me. Otherwise, I would have had one of my older kids with me or I would have been alone. Chad was working. The nurses, residents, and Dr.s were so good to me and took great care of me. I was a weeping wreck along with my mom, but I felt the spirit close to me. The hospital staff said that they were going to do thier best to be able to take care of everything that same day. I stayed in the back office while they scheduled the procedure for later that afternoon. It just so happened that the OB that was on call at the hospital was an expert in the kind of procedure that I needed. If I had been two weeks farther along, I would have had to go into labor and given birth to the fetus. As it was, I was able to be put out the whole time and didn't feel a thing. The Dr. said that when she examined the placenta that it didn't look healthy.

I was considering getting my tubes tied, and Chad supported me in whatever I wanted to do with that. A little later, before the procedure, he came to me and told me that we were not supposed to get my tubes tied and that this little spirit still needed to come to our family. Something had gone wrong with the body. This information also helped the kids cope with this loss. They took it pretty hard too. I am so grateful for Chad and for him sharing his answers to prayers with me. He has been a great comfort to me through all of this.

I am so grateful of my knowledge of this gospel and knowing that Heavenly Father wants us to be happy and that He is in charge, is keeping my spirits up. He has really been holding my hand through all of this and has blessed me with several "tender mercies" through this time. He has blessed me with a wonderful family and friends that have all been there. I have been truly humbled by all the love and prayers that I have felt during this time of trial. My dad always taught me to pray for trials to become a stronger person. I didn't pray for this, but my testimony has been boosted through this process. I have become a stronger person. Thanks to everyone that has supported me and prayed for me and my family. I love you all!

# SIX!!

We just wanted to let people know that we are expecting our 6th and final child. I am due Dec. 12. I have my babies 31/2 weeks early, so we are planning for him to arrive around Nov.17. Yes, Chad and I both feel that we will be having a little boy join our family. Time will tell, but I bet that we are right! The kids are so excited. Brahnson actually took the time to hold and play with a baby today during church. I am happy that this baby is already loved and wanted. Jorden keeps asking if he can feel the baby. I told him it's a little early to be doing that. Camren keeps coming up with all sorts of names. Tori is just plain excited. Sydnee, when we told her that mommy had a baby in her tummy, she said "NO!" She'll come around and I am sure she will be my best helper. Usually, we tell people as soon as we get the positive pregnancy test. This time it has been fun for Chad and I to share a secret for a little while. I am currently 9 weeks along. The Dr. did an ultra sound and said that baby looked great! More updates to come..... Love you all!

Nauvoo

I keep thinking that I will be better at this blogging thing, and I am not! We just continue with our life from day to day. We still really love it here in Wisconsin.
We recently took our first trip to Nauvoo. My mom and my sister's family were going to be there and so we decided to go down there for one night and spend time with them. I forgot my camera, but my sister said she would send some pictures that she took. I'll post those later. It was so fun to see some of my family.
It should only take about 4 hours to drive to Nauvoo. Well, it took us nine. We left at 6:30 in the morning so that we could get another full day in Nauvoo. We were only staying one night and thought that we would make the most of our time. We were about an hour and a half away from Nauvoo when we thought that we would go straight to Carthage and do that first before we went to Nauvoo. We didn't have the exact address and so we just put "Carthage, IL" in our GPS. We didn't know this but, THERE ARE TWO CARTHAGE, IL!! The time of arrival was really close and we knew that the Carthage we wanted to go to was close to Nauvoo, so we thought nothing of it. The GPS took us back an hour and half the opposite way we wanted to go! When we got to the place that the GPS said was Carthage, we were in the middle of nowhere! It was a cross roads with farm land on each of the four corners. We knew that it wasn't a big community, but we thought we should see some sort of sign of a city. We continued driving for about 15 minutes and came to a town called Dixon. We went to the local Library and looked up the actual address of the Carthage Jail and then put it in our GPS, IT WAS THREE HOURS AWAY in the opposite direction that we were going!!! This was around lunch time and so we went to a park and made our lunch and let the kids play a little bit. We continued on our way and got to Nauvoo at 3:30 in the afternoon.We had to get to Nauvoo to pick up tickets for the show that was later that night. We were supposed to pick up our 16 tickets by 2:00p.m. and there was no way that we were going to be able to do that. We don't have a cell phone and so all I could do was say a prayer that they wouldn't give our tickets away. I got to the Visitor's Center and they said that they had just left a message on our home phone and were wondering if we were going to pick them up. Luckily, I got there just in time, before they would have given them to somebody else. We never found time to make it to Carthage. But, we had a good time while we were there and my kids got a new perspective for the trials that the early saints had to endure and how they lived day to day. When we were headed back home the next night, we were in a torrential thunder and lightning storm that had tornado warnings everywhere. It was the scariest drive home that I ever have experienced!
I am grateful that we were able to go and enjoy most of the parts of Nauvoo. I was getting homesick for my mom and it was fun to see her along with my sister's family. All of the kids got a long really well. Living so close to Nauvoo, I am sure we will make it back again and see the other stuff that we didn't get time to do.

Big Update!

I have a lot of updating to do with this blog! I haven't had the time to update this. So, here is the scoop. We were able to go to Utah for Christmas this year. Camren was able to go earlier with his grandpa in his big truck. It helped us out because it was one less child in the car for when we drove there. We made it in 20 hours driving. We were able to be there two weeks! We spent Camren's birthday, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, My birthday, New Year's Eve, and some of New Year's Day. We left on New Year's day and drove back without stopping anywhere to spend the night. We left at 10 a.m. Utah time and got home at 7 a.m Wisconsin time the next morning. It was a hard drive, but everyone was glad to get it over with.

Camren turned 12 while we were there. We were able to celebrate it at Chad's mom's house. We were also able to ordain him a deacon while we were there. The picture below is Camren with both his grandpas, his great-grandpa, and his dad. I love generational pictures!




I thought this picture of my dad and Sydnee was too cute not to share! Every time I look at a picture of my dad, I miss him! I haven't been able to see him a whole lot lately because he has been out of town with his business. We are so grateful that we were able to catch him home for some of our time while we were there.

The ordination took place at Chad's parents' ward house. There were several of his uncles and grandpas there. We have lived out-of -town a lot and with that, we don't get to have a lot of our family share in these kinds of events. It was so nice to have so much support by both our families on Camren's special day!

After the ordination, we enjoyed soup and rolls for dinner and then we just had to have my mom's pies for dessert. There is nothing that Camren likes better than my mom's pies!

It was also fun for everyone to see Sydnee. She wasn't even walking when we left for Wisconsin. We haven't been back in a year and a half with all of our family since. She loved all the attention she got when she sang all of her songs. She particularly liked singing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" and "Jingle Bells".




A few weeks after we got home, Sydnee and I went to tour the Fire Station here. It was very nice. We learned that there is only three people in Middleton that are considered payed fireman. The rest of them are volunteer firefighters.

Sydnee liked seeing all the big trucks and was happy to be able to go inside one to explore!


They also had a lot of fire trucks and such from the past. On the walls they wrote minutes from meetings that were from the early 1900's.

I am so grateful for my family. Heavenly Father has blessed us so much. We have such a wonderful family and we live in such a great place.

Last week, I had an experience that shows me just how much Heavenly Father is aware of us and that if we ask Him for things, He answers! I was finishing reading my book last Saturday. I was reading the "Undaunted" by Gerald Lund. It is a really good book. Anyway, I finished reading it about 1 in the morning. I was so tired! I needed to be up early because we had people coming to dinner after church and I needed to do some dinner preparations. I was saying my prayers and told Heavenly Father that I needed to get up by 6 a.m. I was too tired to set the alarm. I went to sleep, not really thinking about what I had asked. The next thing I knew, our light in our bedroom turned on and Sydnee came in and said "Mommy, it's time to wake up!" I looked over at the clock and it read 6 a.m. straight up! It wasn't a minute before or after! I then remembered what I had asked in my prayer before falling asleep and was amazed how Heavenly Father answers even the littlest of requests! I was also thinking that I should have asked for 6:30 a.m. instead! :)

Odds & Ends

So, I thought I needed to update our blog with a few of our comings and goings. This blog is a little backwards, because I forgot that you need to do your last pictures first and your first pictures last. Oh well! I can't believe that we are already into the middle of December! Time has gone by so fast. We are going to Utah for two weeks for Christmas and New Years. Camren's birthday and my birthday are also going to be squeezed into those two weeks as well. I am not looking forward to the 23 hour drive. I have been praying for dry roads and good weather while we are travelling. Any of you that wish to join in that prayer, our family would appreciate it! :)
There was a little girl that asked Tori to race down the hill at recess with her. Before she asked Tori, she had covered up a hole in the hill with snow. Tori didn't know this and ran right over the ditch and fell and sprained her ankle! We took her to the Dr. and she ended up having an air cast and crutches for the week. I cannot believe how mean some little girls can be. Tori has taken it all in stride though. She is a tough little girl, and a very nice one, I might add. :)


This is Brahnson. Why does he have bows in his hair? He lost a competition with Tori of who could get their area of the kitchen done the fastest!

Thanksgiving was very fun and stress free this year! The pictures are a little smudgy, but you get the idea! My really good friend and I decided that we didn't want to make the whole Thanksgiving meal for just our families and then have to clean up everything. We decided to do it at the church and invite any other families that didn't have families around to join us. We each had our assignment and dinner was done and cleaned up by 4:30 that afternoon and we could go home to clean houses. We decorated so it was a little more "homely". One family brought gingerbread cookies for the kids to decorate as one of that family's traditions. We had an art and crafts table, a game table, and the other half of the gym to play basketball. We had about 30 people there. It was great. We will totally do it for next year.

I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I can guarantee I won't be having a new post before 2010! I hope you all have a very safe and fun holiday! We are so grateful for all of our wonderful friends and family! We love you!

Tori and Jorden's birthday and Halloween

Well, we had a busy October! On October 14 our #4 turned 6! Our #3 turned 9 on Oct. 16. We combined the birthdays on Jorden's birthday and did pie and presents. We had our dear friends the Flentjes over for that part. Tori and Jorden also had their next door neighbor friends here as well. We are not big cake eaters in this house, so I asked them what they wanted me to make for their birthdays and they both wanted pie. We had butterscotch, pumpkin, and banana cream. On Tori's birthday, Chad and I took both of them out to dinner to their favorite place, Hu Hot. That is a local Mongolian Grill. We had a good time.

We had a good time at at Halloween! We had a ward Trunk-or treat the night before Halloween and it was absolutely chaotic! I don't really like having to get kids ready twice in one month! The kids had fun and that is what really matters! Right?

Sydnee was a lady bug! The hat part was a little big. Maybe she'll be able to be a ladybug next year too! Sydnee could not get enough of trick-or-treating! She was on her feet practically the whole time and kept saying "More Candy! More Candy!" She would go up to the door and say "Trick-or-treat!" and then would say "Thank You!" when they gave her some. Some of the people would ask "What are you this year?" and she would say "TWO!!" It was very cute! Maybe, you just had to be there!

Jorden and Tori both wanted to be vampires!

They were both very patient while mom was trying to figure out the make-up!

They both got a lot of comments when they were trick-or-treating!

Camren wanted to be a Ninja! He likes anything that has to do with swords! Go figure! The mask was a little tricky. Brahnson wanted to be a 70's Disco Dude! He had a youth Halloween party and the mom didn't know who he was when he came in. He wanted to stay home for part of the time and hand out candy. Nobody came! Chad said he only handed out to two trick-or-treaters! Oh well! More candy for us! We may just save it for Christmas. The kids go sooo much candy! It is absolutely sickening! We had a good time. The place where we live has an 8:00p.m. curfew for trick-or-treating . We live across from a retirement home so we went there last. We went in and they had a carmel apple dipping station and the dipped whole apples in carmel and then the kids could roll it in toffee, pecans, or rainbow sprinkles. They also had hot cider and a Halloween scene and took pictures. The kids then went a round a little circle and the residents handed out candy while they told all the kids how cute they were.


We hope that all of you had a very Happy Halloween! We are looking forward to the holidays! I wish that we were going to be around more of our family, but that is what you get when you live so far away. We have been so blessed here with a wonderful ward and lots of great friends. It makes it a little easier not being around family as much as we would like to. We love it here during this time of year. It is so beautiful! We haven't seen the snow yet! But, I know it's coming and I have a feeling we are going to see a lot this year! Meanwhile, we will just enjoy the 50's weather and the gorgeous colors all around us! We hope all is well with all of you! We love you all!

*FYI*I don't know how this is going to look on the blog once I hit "publish post", but at least you can see the pictures and read what we have been doing. I am not very good at this blogging thing yet!