Asher's Blessing

 We had Asher's blessing day and it turned out perfect!  Jon's family was able to be there for it and my dad was also able to make it. Jon gave him a wonderful and powerful blessing and it was very special!  Im really grateful that Jon has the Priesthood and that we can recieve the blessing that go with that.  He takes these things very seriously and I really appreciate that.  Asher wore his little tuxedo which is the same one that Noah wore.  When Noah got blessed it barely fit him because he was a pretty big baby. Asher is so small that it was almost too big on him. He looked so cute though, it was perfect!  Our church is at 8:30 in the morning, so we went to sacrament meeting and then everyone came over for a little breakfast.  It was fun to have everyone over and chat and enjoy the morning.  Here are the pictures from the day!
  

Makella's new friend

     If you know me at all, its no surprise that I kinda love animals.  We haven't lived anywhere that would allow us get any kind of pet, and Ive learned to live with that.  But lately Ive been really really wanting to get a pet of some sort.  Jon has a lot more sense when it comes to things like that, so Long story short, after much annoyance and pestering, I finally convinced Jon that getting a hamster would be great for Makella. :)  Give her something to do and take care of and be responsible for.  Ive never really had a hamster and was nervous because I thought they all just bite and weren't very nice, but this hamster is so cute and nice and never bites. Even after being manhandled by a five year old. I've grown quite fond of her. Ella decided to name her Emma and noah really wanted to name her too, so we let him pick her last name.  He chose Gamzy (no clue where that came from)  So now we have our Emma Gamzy and life is a little more fun :)  Its fun to see Ella learn how to hold her and take of her and have her own little buddy.  Ella still has a bit of learning to do but Im happy to say that after being given a bath, locked in a very small drawer of a jewelry box(for who knows how long), being dropped a couple times, and squeezed a little too hard....she is still alive :) 

    

Family Reunion

Right before I had Asher, I decided I needed one last trip to relax and have fun before he came.  I took the kids decided to go to my parent's house so they could see their cousins and it is pretty much the perfect place to relax.  It turned out to be great timing because my grandparents were celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary and so all of my siblings came up as well! So we had all the Smith kids there and all but 2 of the grandkids. It turned out to be so much fun!  I was there for about a week before everyone came.  When everyone came, we spent the first day at my parents house, enjoying the perfect weather outside.  We spent the day munching strawberries, looking fir bugs and playing in the sprinklers. So much fun!

                                                        
                                                      6 smiths, All in a row!

                                          
                                      roasting marshmallows and having smores

The next day we all drove to Sunnyside for the party. It was nice to be able to see my grandparents again and enjoy their beautiful yard.  65 is definitely a long time and they are great examples to all of us.  It was weird to see all the kids playing in the yard and house just like we used to do as kids. I still feel like we are not old enough for that.
 
                             Grandma and Grandpa Smith in front of their beautiful flowers!

                  I love watching these 3 boys play together. They are all such good guys!

 My grandparents had 3-4 of these bird houses hanging from their tree and there were babies in all of them! The kids liked seeing the baby birds inside.

 After that, we moved the party to Jeff's house.  Most of the adults went out to Miners for some milkshakes and chili fries, So yummy! I love sitting around and chatting with my brothers and sister, they are seriously funny people.  The next day we went to a park in Yakima and did some smith family races and took some pictures. People started leaving after that and then I finally had to come back home and think about having a baby.  It was such a great trip though and makes me wish I lived closer to my family!

One month!

  Here is little Asher after one month, he just keeps getting cuter and is still a perfect baby!  He has gained 2 pounds already and Im sad to lose my tiny little newborn.

           I just love his shimmery golden hair, its the best!

Baby Asher

 ** Big long birth story**

           Little Asher has been around for 6 weeks now and he has been a wonderful little boy!  He came a couple weeks early on June 27th.  With my other kids, I was always induced, but this time I didnt want to do that. I wanted to just let it go and not have to have a bunch of pitocin and what not.  Well, we found out there was a little annoyance with our insurance.  Long story short it would be better for us to have a baby in june instead of july.  I didnt want to push anything too hard, but my doctor said he could strip my membrane and then if I was ready it would work and it I wasnt, then no big deal.  So he did it once and nothing really happened.  But I had it done a second time and that seemed to do it! My mom wasnt supposed to come for a few more days, but she felt like she should just get here, so she came early.  The next day I woke up feeling great and like nothing was happening.  At about 9:15 that morning, my water broke, but I didnt realize that was what happened. It wasn't a huge gush or anything and I just wasnt sure. I decided to not say anything to my mom yet until I was sure something was happening. I figured that if my water really did break, then I would start getting contractions or something.  Plus, Jon was at some training for work and didnt want to call him away for nothing. So we went about our day, we went to the library for story time and I even went to the chiropractor for and adjustment:)  I felt fine and never felt any contractions..I jsut felt kinda...drippy (TMI, I know :) )  Finally at about noon, I told my mom that something was weird and that maybe my water broke.  She told me to call my doctor and they just happened to be out to lunch. So I waited til one and finally got a hold of them.  My nurse told me that my water most likely did break and I needed to go to the hospital now!  So I had to try and get a hold of jon.  He was doing CERT training at the prison and they had a hard time trying to get a hold of him.  Apparently he was riding on a bus when the bus just stopped in the middle of the road and someone got on and told Jon he needed to call his wife Right now.  haha, so he had a fun time with that!  I Went straight to the hospital and they verified that my water really was broken, so this was it!  At that point, I still felt great, no contractions or anything.  It was about 3:00 at this point,

   I really wanted to avoid getting any pitocin, but since it had been so long since my water broke, they needed to get things going so I had to get all hooked up with iv's and stuff like that.  I seriously hate it when they put in the IV. Its always been an awful experience. They usually cant find a vein the first time and dig around for awhile and I bleed everywhere and usually get super nauseous. Its awful and this was no exception!  They finally got it in the most annoying spot on my arm so I could bend my wrist or anything, I was really annoyed by that!  Ugh, I hate those things!  Anyways, after they started pitocin, things started going pretty slowly, it took awhile before I really felt contractions and it took even longer for them to get stronger.  At nine that night, the contractions for so bad that I decided it was time for the epidural. They checked me and I was at a 4. I was worried I would be waiting all night long since it took so long just to get to a four. The epidural kicked in and life was good again, it was a perfect epidural too, because I could still kinda move my legs and feel pressure and stuff. After that, things pretty much sped by, they checked my about 45 minutes later and I had gone from a 4 to a 10! It was crazy!  My doctor came and all the hustle and bustle of nurses everywhere.  They were having my push while he set up and then when he was ready it was only a few pushes and Asher was here at 9:58. We didnt know if it was a boy or girl and my doctor let Jon announce it since I couldnt see it.  I'll admit that when he said it was a boy I had a quick response of Oh....Its a boy...but that only lasted a second. :)  ITS A BOY!  Jon cut the cord and they gave him right to me.  He was so cute and right away I knew he had Jon's nose :)   With my other two kids, they usually take the baby away from me to clean up and wahtever and I dont see them for an hour or so,  but here, they never took him from me and within 10 minutes, everyone cleared out and it was just us and the baby. I really liked that!  I got to feed him right away and it was just nice!

 Makella  and Noah were so excited to meet their new brother! We were worried that Makella would be disappointed that it wasnt a girl, but she absolutely love him! I think she just loved that he was a baby.  They were both so good with him. These pictures got a little fuzzy, but are cute anyways.

He was born with such perfect golden hair,  and was so shimmery. I love it! It looks like he will be blond like his brother.!

  Going home, he looks so little in his carseat!

         

A long overdue update!

Ive pretty much given up and trying to keep this thing up to date, it just doesn't seem to fit into my day very well, so maybe someday Ill get to all the stuff I  missed, because there is a lot that I should be writing down...somewhere! I dont keep a journal all that well and would love to have a better and current blog to write down some of these things that I would like to remember.  I guess thats a good goal to work on. :) Anyways, here are some of the things we did during April! It was a good month and was lots of fun!

We started out the month with Jon doing some new training at work. He entered the training to become a CERT member at the prison. Pretty much the prison swat team, they do cell extractions and such.  I think both of us underestimated what exactly this would be. We thought, "oh how great that he will have a more normal schedule and be home in the evenings, it will be so great.... It was a 12 hours a day for 10 days.  He came home looking like this pretty often:

 

 The rest of him pretty much looked like this: 

He got pretty beat up and they worked him really hard. It was a little taste of what its like to be in the military I think.  He said it was one of the hardest things physically he has done, but was also very much worth it and he enjoyed all the different things that he learned. We wereso proud of him for completing it and doing so well!

 

   He got pretty beat up and they worked him really hard. It was a little taste of what its like to be in the military I think.  He said it was one of the hardest things physically he has done, but was also very much worth it and he enjoyed all the different things that he learned. We were so proud of him for completing it and doing so well!  during that time he missed our anniversary and easter but we tried to celebrate together afterwards with a fun dinner at tacanos with the kids. It was great!

     During that time it was also Easter, so me and the kids pretty much did it on our own.  It was a good Easter though and I tried to just take it easy and enjoy the day. We got up early and searched for the baskets on all the eggs. Noah liked finding his basket, but the eggs was a different story. We had decorated a bunch of eggs the day before, and he only wanted to find HIS eggs.  So he showed off his two year old self during that fun, but other than that, it was great! We all had candy for breakfast and rushed off the church by 8:30.  The rest of the day was just relaxing and doing whatever they wanted and we ended the day with Waffles, cant really beat that!

 

   As for the rest of the month,  we had my birthday which was pretty low key, but great!  Every year we try to make a realy great cake for each other's birthday, but this year I requested german chocolate and when Jon found the recipe and it said he had to seperate eggs, he decided it was a little over his head :) So I got a wonderfully chocolate cake from Fred meyer!

 

We went on lots of walks and visits to the park and Jon let the kids try out his bb gun which they thought was pretty cool.  Ella had a preschool art show that she worked really hard at and she loved seeing all her pictures on the wall.  She has really loved preschool and we will be sad to see it end this month.  We made some really cool rainbow cupcakes that Makella has been dying to make and of course, there has been plenty of silliness!  Enjoy the overload of pictures!