Feliz Navidad!

Thanksgiving

Went up to St. George to Jeff's sister's house. Thanks for hosting Thanksgiving Mindy! All of Jeff's family was there...though not all at the same time. Good to see everyone and nice to see the little babies.



Hailey looks like she's wearing a crown. Waiting for Thanksgiving dinner.



Does it look like chaos with all these kids? That's not even including Lincoln, Parker, Rose and Logan.



Thanksgiving Wii!
Grandma, Hailey, Lincoln, Hannah, Veronica, Matthew, David and Vanessa. (oh yeah, Angela is behind Hannah doing her hair)



Don't know if this picture was taken pre or post Veronica's meltdown.
Baby Rose, Hannah and Veronica.

Partial month in photos

Jack-O-Lanterns. The kids made the designs while the parents carved the designs on the pumpkins. It was fun and we roasted the pumpkin seeds which turned out great!





Picture with the pumpkins before bed.


Halloween night...finally! David as Mario, again! Veronica as Hermione in Harry Potter. Vanessa as a bee and Violet as a hot dog.



Our ward's Halloween party. This was the second time we had to get everyone dressed up.





At our friends' trunk or treat. This was the "dress rehearsal" to Halloween night. First night of dressing up in costumes.





At the school Halloween parade. Dressing up now for the 3rd time!


Veronica with some of her classmates.




Proud parent of a winner of the Award of Excellence for the month of October. Don't ask me what that means...I guess she's excellent! I agree.




Violet has taken to partially covering her face when she sleeps.



The Vidaurre family with my adorable neice, Layla.

a 7 year old and a 3 month old

Veronica turned 7 on the 25th and Violet turned 3 months!
Veronica weighs about 41 lbs and Violet weighs about 13 lbs.

For those of you who don't know Veronica, let me describe why I love her so much. She forgives me constantly for my shortcomings. She has an amazing memory, can still recall things from 3-4 years ago. She LOVES to read and I can't really take credit for teaching her. She taught herself how to read, probably because I wouldn't read her all the books she wanted. She's a very loving soul but very stubborn. Veronica is smart and innocent. Veronica is competitive and loves to win and is still learning that sometimes she will be bad at something or won't win all the time. She loves to draw and can destroy a ream of paper in a day. I have learned that I am far from perfect and Veronica will remind me from time to time of that. I love having her in our family. She's complicated, emotional, dramatic, fantastic, creative, compassionate, curious and so much more and I love her so! Happy Birthday Veronica.

The LA County Fair

I thought I'd treat the kids to something spectacular and awesome...loaded up the minivan (by myself) and headed to the fair. I know what you're thinking, and no I was not CRAZY to just go out there on my own. I met some people with their kids there and we all pooled our energy together to be able to undertake this fair. I would not have gone if I were not there with other adults to help me from being overwhelmed. I had a stroller full of snacks/food for the inevitable meltdowns and my books for free admission and my very well deserved carbonated beverage in hand. It was hot. It was huge. It was deep fried goodness. I did have to call on all my will power to not get a deep fried twinkie however I did cave and got some deep fried zucchini (at least it was a vegetable, right?). The kids had a great time and I actually had some fun too. The only reason I didn't konk out on the drive home was because I was driving! Everyone else was fast asleep 5 minutes into the drive, minus one super human named Veronica who has unknown amounts of energy.


There were TONS of thes photo-op cut outs and the kids stopped at almost all of them.

Grinding some corn.


Here we all are. And yes, Violet was there with us. She spent most of the day in her stroller very happy and very sleepy. She was the very best behaved out of the whole lot!

Cousin time, blessing, hiking and missing tooth!

This past Sunday, Jeff was able to do Violet's baby blessing. We had some family, from my side, and friends that were able to be there and share this sweet special moment.


Cousin Layla is playing with Violet...it'll be great once they can actually play together without poking each others eyes or pulling hair or any of that other stuff. This is the first time any of our kids has had a cousin so close and hopefully they can be really great friends.

This dress is almost as old as I am! All of my girls have worn this dress for their blessing and all of Jeff's sisters wore it for their blessings and I think some cousins have worn it too!

She looks so cute, huh? Her tia made her little headband flower thing...very talented!

Here's Violet right before Church.

Ventured over to Solstice Canyon in Malibu for this hike. Kids actually made it without complaining too much. "I'm dirty! I'm hungry! I'm tired! Carry me! I need to go potty!" That was just from me...he he.

Veronica has been wiggling her little front tooth for a couple of weeks now and finally decided that it was time for it to come out. So, she said I could pull it for her. She really wanted this and of course it was picture day the next day! Anyway, the good thing about losing a tooth is that Veronica insisted on getting to bed on time. I still chuckle when I see Veronica's toothless smile.

My little girls

Violet in September

8/29/2011




8/28/2011



9/03/2011




9/03/2011

9/07/2011

9/08/2011


9/12/2011

This is my chaos...

Everytime I walk downstairs I see these 4 little people. Most days are overwhelming and exhausting but knowing they love me unconditionally gives me the energy that I need to do my work. I love my kids...they drive me crazy and wear me down but they make me laugh everyday.

Preschooler and 2nd Grader!

David had his taste of preschool for a few months last school year, but he doesn't start Kindergarten until next school year (2012) so he's doing preschool again...this time for the whole school year. Luckily he doesn't seem to care that he's going to preschool again, he's just having a fun time being a "big kid."
Not a picture of the actual first day, but still equally excited. It's funny because I asked if he wanted to wear his new shoes for school and he said yeah and now has deemed them his school shoes. He will not wear any other shoe to school...very particular about his clothes.
Anyway, he loves preschool and it's nice for me to have time with the other 2 while both David and Veronica are in school. Hopefully David will stay relatively healthy this year. Last year he was sick a lot while he was in school. The summer has been illness free, sort of. Here's to a fantastic year of preschool.






She's finally back in school and we are all so happy about that!
It has certainly been a very long summer with Veronica and all of her questions and sass...I have had my fill and am so happy to have some time with my spunky little Nessa and little Violet without Veronica telling me how to do things. Love her and glad that she's back to being busy with school and friends.

YES!!!!

School starts tomorrow!
That's all I can blog.

Put in some new tile...no thanks to a leaking refridgerator line.


Took this picture right around midnight. As you can see, she's wide awake and so are we!


Violet and her best friend, green bink.

How was your weekend?

So, our family just had THE longest week of our lives...as well as the hardest. I'll share a quick recap of what happened. On Thursday night, really late, we fed Violet right before bed and shortly after she threw it all up. We just figured she ate just a bit too much and didn't have much room for it so it had to come out. Anyway, we put her down to bed and she peacefully slept. She woke up at around 5am. When I first woke up I thought, "wow, she slept a long time." Then I fed her, but she didn't really seem interested. Within a few minutes she threw it up. So, then I remembered that she threw up earlier and thought that she must have some sort of stomach bug. All day Friday she would eat then shortly after she would throw up. I tried everything...sitting her straight up, feeding her formula, nursing her, not feeding her as much, burping her in the middle of feeding her. Nothing seemed to work and she kept throwing up- projectile vomitting. Called the doctor Saturday morning and took Violet into urgent care from the doctor's recommendation. The urgent care doctor sent us to the ER because Violet was very dehydrated. We spent all night in the ER, with blood/urine tests, and an ultrasound but nothing could be determined. They put her on an IV to hydrate her and did an ultrasound of her abdomen. I was hoping it was pyloric stenosis, I did some google searches on Friday, and her symptoms sounded like this, but I guess the ultrasound didn't show any signs of that. The ER nurse seemed to be happy that it wasn't pyloric stenosis, but if it was then we would know the problem and could fix it...but I guess she was happy because the solution is surgery and Violet is just a baby after all. Anyway, since they couldn't determine the problem, they admitted her to the NICU based on the recommendation of our pediatrician. So, we headed up to the NICU. Until they knew what was causing her to throw everything up she would have to stay in the NICU on IVs to keep her hydrated. Walking away from Violet, walking out of that NICU, walking out of the hospital and walking into our house without Violet was the hardest thing I've done. It still makes me tear up as I write this and remember that day. Long story already. A gastro-specialist came in and they did and x-ray where they found that indeed it was pyloric stenosis. Pyloric stenosis, semi-common condition that happens when a muscle near the stomach is enlarged and doesn't allow the milk to pass so it just builds up and then gets thrown up within minutes of eating. How does that get fixed? Surgery, a pyloromyotomy? Quick procedure where a small incision is made by her abdomen and the surgeon cuts the muscle that is enlarged so it lets the food pass through to the small intestines. One day of recovery. It took a while for Violet to fully wake from anesthsia so her discharge kept being delayed because they like to monitor their feedings for a day to make sure they are keeping it down. Wednesday night Violet threw some of her milk up and so the doctor delayed her discharge but then out of the blue Thursday morning he said it was okay to take her home within the next hour or two. What a relief.


After her procedure she was really sleepy. This is her relaxing.



My little Violet after coming out of surgery.

Although I can't understand what Jeff underwent, I do know that his strength helped me stand and helped me breathe. All the prayers from friends and family were also things that helped me have strength. Knowing that Jesus Christ suffered all of my pains/sorrows/heartache helped me feel some solace knowing that I was not alone in my suffering. The hardest part was not knowing what was happening to Violet...if she would ever get better. Once we knew what was happening I felt peace and I knew that there was a solution.

Violet is home and we are so grateful for her. Way more tired than I've been in a long time but so happy to be tired. So happy that she's here in our home and not in the hospital. So happy she's waking up in the middle of the night to eat.


Violet back home.

One week down!

Only how many more? Violet has been a doll. Love how much they sleep and am still amazed at how I can just stare at her for hours.


They all want to hold her. David has been the most hands on with Violet. I can already tell that they will be close...he loves her so much.


Violet has definitely been the most pink out of the other kids.


Does this picture make Violet look tiny or does it make that diaper look huge? It's a 4.


Little Violet.