How did this happen???!  I blinked and all of a sudden I have a kindergartener!  I do not know where the past 6 years have gone, but reality hits when you are taking your oldest to their first day of “real school”!  I was doing really well holding it all together until we started walking away and Josey just bawled saying, “Spencer needs to come home with me!”  She was so sad that he was staying!  I have to say that my house was REALLY quiet this afternoon as Isabelle slept and Josey and I did some reading and drawing together!  When I picked him up from school, I asked how his first day was and he grinned a huge smile and said, “Mom it’s even better than ABC Preschool!”  Which is saying a lot because we all LOVED his preschool experience!  I am thrilled and think that this year is going to be a great year of learning and growth for our energetic, handsome, smart boy!  Man I love him!

I can’t believe that 2 weeks has passed already! It feels like a lifetime has passed in those 2 short weeks, but every day has been a gift!  Isabelle is such a darling baby!  She has captured the hearts of everyone around her, but most especially of her big brother and big sister!  Spencer and Josey LOVE her…sometimes a little too much!  She has mommy and daddy wrapped tightly around her little finger too though!  She loves to snuggle on your shoulder and is wide awake from 3-5am most mornings…that’s when we do our most talking with each other!  She weighed 6 lbs. 10 oz.  (8th percentile) and was 19 3/4 inches long (28th percentile) at her doctors appointment.  I think she has gained all 6 oz in her cheeks!  They seem to be the only thing that has really changed in her appearance in the past 2 weeks!  She is such a joy and delight to have in our family!  We thank Heavenly Father daily for her birthmom, Ieisha, and the hard choice and sacrifice she made to give this beautiful little girl a good life! 

Okay, so here’s the whirlwind story of how little Isabelle came to be in our family!  And it is a whirlwind! 

On Tuesday, August 3rd I got a call from Jane (our caseworker) telling us about a birthmother they had flown in last Friday that was due in a few weeks that they wanted to show our profile to.  So after getting the details about Ieisha, the birthmom, I told her yes, but explained that I was leaving to a family reunion on Wednesday and that Chris would be in town until Friday at noon and that where I was going had very limited cell phone reception.  On Wednesday evening Chris texted me and told me Ieisha had chosen us.  The plan was to meet with her when we got back on Monday evening and she had a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday and would most likely be induced on Thursday…that WAS the plan.  Fortunately things don’t always go according to plan. 

Friday we got up and went to the lake to swim and boat.  We got back to the cabin and showered kids and started to get lunch when I had the thought that I hadn’t checked my phone in a while.  Chris had texted me at 11:30 that she was going to the hospital and that I should probably call him.  You think?!??!! So at 2:30 I packed myself up, left my kids with Grandma and Grandpa Teeter and the cousins and raced the 2 1/2 hours home.  We got the phone call that Isabelle was born at 5:58pm on August 6th weighing 6 lbs. 4oz. and 19 in long.  Ieisha still wanted to meet us that night, so I hurried and threw baby necessities in the washer and jumped in the shower and we went shopping for some gifts for her.  At 7:30 we headed to Pioneer Valley Hospital in West Valley City and got to meet Ieisha and our new baby girl.  Ieisha is a honey!  The first half hour we spent getting to know each other and then the last hour she had us laughing our guts out!  She is so sweet and so humble and so giving.  We left around 9:30 and headed home to get baby stuff washed and ready.

Saturday morning we got up with the understanding that we would head to the hospital when we got a call from our case worker most likely around lunch time, so we went shopping to get all our baby stuff and some gifts for her 3 year old and 1 year old girls.  Then we were going to go look for bunkbeds for Spencer and Josey.  While in Walmart we were called and Ieisha wanted us to come up and spend the day with her.  So we quickly finished our shopping there and headed to the hospital picking up lunch on the way.  We spent a couple of hours with her in the hospital before she wanted to get the heck out of there.  She looked so tired and the nurses kept bugging her.  At 2:30 she was DONE.  We all said our goodbyes (see you sometime laters really), shed lots of tears and gave lots of hugs.  After Ieisha left, we spent the next hour with Isabelle and then had to go find bunkbeds and sign all of our paperwork with Jane.  We tracked down some bunkbeds, mattresses and dressers, signed paperwork and headed back to the hospital to be with Isabelle while we were waiting for the phone call saying that Ieisha had signed all of her paperwork at 6pm.  When we got back to the hospital at 6:12 and still hadn’t heard anything, I was stressing big time.  I had Chris say a prayer and felt this immediate peace wash over me!  At 6:32 we go the text from Jane that it was official and I took my first real, deep breath in 4 days!  We stayed with Isabelle until just after 7 and then had to get back to our house to drop off the mattresses and one dresser and go pick up the bunkbed and the other dresser and eat some dinner at 9 pm!  After that we came home and built bunkbeds for the kids (thanks to the help of some really great friends) until 11:30 and then I ran to Walmart to get some food for Sunday, came home and folded baby clothes until 1:15am and then finally felt my brain was tired enough to get a little sleep.

Sunday morning we went to church and then head to the hospital and waited for the agency to show up to get discharged.  We waited 2 hours(…snore!) at the hospital.  I was going crazy knowing ALL that had to be done at my house before the kids got home with G&G Teeter.  We finally got to leave at 1:30 and then went into overdrive to get dressers out of boxes, Josey moved over to the other room, bed made, Isabelle’s room put together (deep breath) and then getting the rest of the house looking like a house instead of a place where a bomb had gone off!  We accomplished our goal and when the kids showed up they were SO EXCITED!  I don’t know if they were more excited about their new baby sister or their new bedroom!  They held her, loved on her (maybe a little too much) and were so soft and tender with her that it made my heart rejoice! 

I CAN NOT believe that I am a mom of 3 beautiful children!  I hit the JACKPOT…3 amazing birthmoms and 3 remarkably soulful children!  GOD IS GOOD!  He has blessed me abundantly and given me tender mercies all along the way!  I am so thrilled and grateful to be raising these wonderful children!  Thank you Becky, Sondi and Ieisha for your devoted sacrifice and the powerful love you have for these sweet children and the desire you had to give them a rich life!  We love you and we love them so much!

Usually you hear this question in reference to hitting multiple Disneyland Parks in several days.  My friend, Racquel, and I decided we were going to take this to the extreme and take our kids to 10 parks around the American Fork area in ONE morning.  I made our list and we loaded the kids in to the van and started at the Northern most AF park.  The kids each had a camera and took great pictures from their point of view at the parks.  We spent about 15 min at each park and had a blast.  We made it to 7 parks in a 2 hour time period.  We went to some parks that we have never been to and revisited some that we don’t get to very often!  The end result: tons of pictures, parks we want to go back to and spend more time, sprinklers coming on in one (in the middle of morning–LAME!), tired mommies, happy kids, and lots of fun memories!  Here are a few of my pictures of Spencer, Josey, Kira and Olivia:

He did it!  One lost tooth! After months of telling me he had a loose tooth (thanks to the unit on teeth in Preschool) and then weeks of realizing he finally did have a loose tooth, wiggling, pushing with his tongue and hanging on by one little root.  I told him to take a deep breath and I was going to just push it back into place, but I pulled it forward quickly instead and it popped right out!  He was so very excited to go through this right of passage!  To celebrate we had to read the book “The Night Before the Tooth Fairy” at bedtime and he wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy telling her where his tooth was hiding and went to bed only to wake up and find a silver dollar under his pillow!  He was thrilled!!  He had to call the grandparents and tell them all about it.  Grandma Teeter couldn’t believe the going rate for teeth now a days.  “Inflation!” she said.  Then for the next week he would walk up to people and pull his lower lip out to show them his missing tooth…he was just a little enthusiastic!