Easter

Peep jousting:

Championship round!

Dyer ended up winning for the 3rd year in a row!

Easter family picture!

It didn't turn out very well.  The lighting wasn't great.  It looked fine on the camera but when I downloaded the pictures onto the computer they were ridiculously dark.  The individual pictures I took on my phone turned out just fine.  So weird!

Church at home...

I decided to do a countdown until baby #6 comes so I had each of the kids hold up a number.  I meant to get an individual picture of each kid without the number but somehow that slipped my mind.  Oops!  Well, it is what it is I guess...

36.2 weeks!  Only 5 more days until baby #6!

Nathan needed a head shot for his Washington medical license.  I decided to include it on here since everyone else got an individual picture and I didn't want him to feel left out.

The next day I decided to try my hand at doing a pregnancy silhouette shot.  I think it turned out okay.  36.3 weeks!

My goal was to get all caught up on the blog before the baby came.  I just barely made the deadline!  

We are super excited to meet the newest addition to our family.  In less than 24 hours I should be getting induced.  Hopefully she will be here sometime on Friday!  So exciting!

April Fools Day

I only did one thing this year for dinner.  "Fake baked potato"  It was supposed to look like cowboy spuds.

The potato was vanilla ice cream rolled in cocoa powder.  The meat was chocolate chocolate rice krispie treats mixed with chocolate syrup.  The sour cream was whipped topping.  The cheese didn't work very well but I grated white chocolate and dyed it yellow.  The butter was a starburst.

Easton wasn't a fan of it but that's nothing new.

I thought it turned out okay and it actually tasted really good!

This and That

Someone loves to dance!

Finally added some artwork to Easton's room.  It's a little hard to see but the scenery of trees, water and moon is in the shape of a guitar.  Perfect for Easton!

We enrolled the 4 oldest into School of Rock at the end of February.  A lady just opened it up right before everything was getting shut down.  The kids were able to go for about 3 weeks (individual lessons for the 3 oldest and group lessons for Blakely) before everything became remote.  The 3 oldest weren't able to meet with their band before the shut down.  The 3 oldest are still doing music lessons (both individual and group) but unfortunately Blakely isn't able to participate until they open up again.  Her class was basically an introduction to all different musical instruments so she can figure out what she wants to play.  I've been making the older 3 once a week take 15 minutes each to teach her somethings on their instrument.  Blakely seems pretty sure that she wants to play the Bass so that everyone has their own instrument.  I guess we'll have to wait and see what she picks.

Making crafts with daddy while staying home.

Nathan's moonlighting job has been put on the back burner until things get back to normal.  He's also only working 2 1/2 days a week for the military.  That means we get to have him home with us Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday.

Since we are doing school at home we've decided to start the kids learning a new language.  Easton has decided to learn Spanish, Blair French, Dyer Italian, and Blakely Chinese.  Blakely only did Chinese for about 2 weeks before Nathan convinced her to switch to Spanish since neither of us could help her with Chinese.  I tried to convince her to do Japanese since I took 2 years of it in High school but she decided to go with Spanish.  

We got some new furniture for our living room.  It got delivered shortly after everything started shutting down.  We've added decorative pillows and a throw blanket since this picture was taken.  Eventually I hope to get a new end table.

We also got a new rocker/recliner for the new baby!

Dyer decided to decorate my belly one day.

Grandpa Layne sent the kids this neat marble set that they had to put together.  Easton and Blair worked on it for hours!

Happy Birthday to Nathan

Nathan's mom was kind enough to make Nathan a birthday cheesecake before she left.  Secretly I was really excited that she made one so that I didn't have to!!!  Haha!  That is usually what Nathan has for his birthday and it takes a while to make.  He's worth it but I'm glad (being pregnant and all) that I didn't have to do it this year.  We still thought that he needed something for his actual birthday so Blair made 7 layer bars for his birthday dessert.

Sick Sick Sick and COVID 19

I had a rough go for a while.  The first two weeks in February McKinley and I kept taking turns with a cold.  We felt pretty good around her birthday so I thought we were done getting sick. However, the day after her birthday (Tuesday Feb. 18th) I started to not feel well again.  I got another cold and started loosing my voice.  Wednesday night Easton started running a fever and stayed home from school for a few days.  Easton, McKinley and I stayed home from church because we all weren't feeling very well.  By Sunday night McKinley and I were both running fevers and by Wednesday night Blair and Blakely started running fevers (the night Gretchen came into town).  Blair's fever was only a low grade fever but I was worried that hers would eventually get high like everyone else so she stayed home from school for a day.  She was fine the next day.  Blakely however had a fever for about 3-4 days (same as Easton and McKinley).  My fever lasted about 5-6 days.  Nathan was the next victim and started running a fever Friday (the day Bethanie and Hudson came into town). I think his fever lasted about 3-4 days.  Dyer was the only one in our family that didn't get sick.  

To make things worse on Sunday night (Mar. 1) I started feeling itchy on my feet and hands again...I was pretty sure I was getting Cholestasis again (30 weeks).  I called the hospital Monday morning hoping they could get me in for a same day appointment.  Of course they didn't have anything available so I had to wait another day.  Monday night I was itchy all over my body.  That never happened when I was pregnant with McKinley so I was worried that it was worse this time around.  At my appointment on Tuesday they decided to put me on Ursodiol just in case I had Cholestasis and I had to go get my blood drawn.  The bile acid test takes about 1-2 weeks to get the results so they just wanted to start treating it right away just to be safe.  Thank goodness because it is miserable to deal with the itching and it takes a while for the medicine to kick in anyways.  About 10 days later we found out that my bile acids were up to 59!  The normal range is 0-10!  Yep, definitely had Cholestasis.

If all that wasn't bad enough on Tuesday night (Mar. 3) I woke up around 11:30 pm to tons of pressure in my right ear.  Along with my fever I was super congested and obviously all the fluid in my ear wasn't draining.  I was up for about 35 minutes with excruciating pain.  I've had my ear drum rupture twice before but both times it happened rather quickly.  This dragged on forever!  It was horrible.  Eventually the Tylenol I took started to kick in and the pressure wasn't as bad that I was able to fall asleep.  When I woke up in the morning I had blood on my pillow...Yep, my ear drum ruptured again!  I went to the ER that morning.  They couldn't tell if my ear drum ruptured because there was so much blood in the way.  They just decided to put me on antibiotics.  I had Nathan look in my ear last week (5 weeks after) and he said there is still a huge hole...I'm hoping this will heal itself because I really don't want to have to get surgery to fix the hole.  I'm told it can take 6-8 weeks to heal so fingers crossed that it heals in the next 2 weeks.

Back to Cholestasis...since I have Cholestasis the doctors started making me do Non Stress Tests (NST) twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays).  My first day was Mar. 13th.  I was really annoyed that I was going to have to do this because it was just going to be a pain to add this to an already busy schedule.  Plus I would need to arrange for McKinley to go to Teddy's Child Watch twice a week for at least an hour.  I'm sure McKinley wouldn't mind but I just had a bad attitude about it.  Well, with the Covid-19 going around they decided on Mar. 13th that the kids would no longer be going to school (at least for 2 weeks).  Those two weeks turned into over a month and now the kids will no longer be going back to school for the rest of the school year.  Everyone is supposed to stay home unless it is absolutely necessary to leave your house.  The kids are doing distance learning (aka homeschooling).  Church has been cancelled and most places are closed down.  It is so crazy!  It's a bit ironic now because with everything being shut down I actually look forward to my NST.  It is nice to just get out of the house 2-3 times a week.  Also, because I have Cholestasis I have to get induced 3 weeks early.  Tomorrow I'm scheduled to get induced so hopefully by Friday we will have a new little one.      

This is what stores looked like when everything started getting shut down!  Everyone was freaking out and hoarding things.  You couldn't find toilet paper, Clorox wipes, or hand sanitizer anywhere!   

playground closed

Nathan's family comes for a visit

Before they came Aunt Bethanie sent a bunch of dominoes so the kids could practice before Hudson came.  Hudson is obsessed with dominoes. 

Hudson playing dominoes with the kids:

Nathan's mom, sister and nephew came out for about a week.  I felt horrible that we weren't able to do a whole bunch.  We had some bug (probably the flu) that came through our house and ruined most of the plans we had.  We were hoping Nathan's brother and his family would come up to visit (they just had a baby back in January) and we would all go to Six Flags.  None of that happened because we were still running fevers and we didn't want to get the baby sick.  Instead Nathan's mom and sister drove 3 hours to visit them for a couple days.  Thanks for coming out and sorry it wasn't much fun.  Hopefully next time we'll all be healthy so we can have some fun!

McKinley turns 3!

McKinley had a great day!  She woke up bright and early and immediately opened her birthday gifts!  She got some princess dress up clothes, water coloring books, and money. 

We decided to take everyone to Six Flags.  We ended up getting season passes but we haven't been back since.  We were hoping to go when Nathan's family was in town but we were sick most of the time they were here.  Once we got better then the whole Covid-19 thing happened and most everything is closed down.  Maybe we'll get use out of them over summer...

The whole crew!

Birthday girl and me

Birthday girl!

She was not a huge fan of this ride.

Valerie had to go on with McKinley.  I tried but they wouldn't let me because I was expecting...I think I would have been fine but whatever!  I should have acted offended that they would suggest that I was pregnant...

Valerie is not a ride person but she was a trooper.  She must love McKinley!

Train ride!

All McKinley talked about wanting to do was ride the train.  I forgot they had this train ride but it was a good thing they did because the big train ride that I was planning on taking her on was closed for the day.

Mr. Will was kind enough to take McKinley on this ride.

and this ride!

Colton took McKinley on the swing ride.  She was basically in tears by the time this ride was over.

She started crying about 3 seconds after this ride started so the man actually stopped the ride to let her off.  I'm not sure why she didn't like this ride but maybe it was because she was still traumatized from the swing ride.

Blakely and Blair

McKinley isn't much of a cake person.  She'll usually lick the frosting off but hardly does she ever eat the cake.  I figured she would do best with mini cupcakes.  She actually ate it the whole thing!

She had to try out another dress.

Basketball Blakely

This was Blakely's first year playing basketball.  Like Dyer we need to toughen her up as well.  I referred to her as the BFG (Big Friendly Giant).  She was taller than most everyone but she was too sweet to get in and rebound the ball.  I believe Blakely ended up scoring 3 or 4 baskets this year!  I hope she wants to play next year as well.

At the very end she gets in on the action.

Dribbling the ball up the court

Haha!  She has no clue where the ball is but she is going to stick to her person no matter what!

Gets the loose ball...but then gets distracted by her church friend, Rebecca!

Another loose ball

Finally rebounds the ball and takes a shot

rebound

She shoots, she scores!!!

shot

She scores!!!