Yoshi

Yoshi is our new little critter. He has been a very good and quiet pet so far. The kids love him. Kamdyn loves his cage.

The Day After

All weekend I thought Kamrin had to work the day after Christmas. He wakes up at 6am to leave for work and I woke up at 6:10 and noticed he was in bed so woke him up to tell him he was late and he said "I wanted to surprise you. I really dont have to work today" That was a very nice surprise!! He later woke up with the kids and let me sleep in! We spent the rest of the morning playing and taking everything else out of packages. We had a gingerbread house we had been trying to make all December and it never worked out so we took it up to Kamrins grandmas so she could watch the kids make it also. The rest of his family came a little later and we all ate yummy Christmas leftovers. We then went driving around looking at the amazing lights people do and found Christmas Street and read the kids the scripture story of Christs birth. It was such a fun day and a great time to wind down the holidays.

Christmas

Another Christmas has come and gone. It takes so much preparing and is gone in a flash. This Christmas was a great one for sure. We are so blessed. The morning started with opening presents of course. We were all VERY spoiled. I love being Santa! Its so fun seeing the kids get so excited. They all seemed to love every single present they got. Kamdyn was more into climbing on everything he could :-) We spent most of the morning opening packages and playing with their new stuff. I made muffins for breakfast then we started getting guests over to see what the kids got. In the early afternoon we went to my grandmas and ate some yummy food then headed to Kamrins grandmas for more yummy food. Holidays are all about the food right?? :-) After visiting for a while we headed to my great aunt Kays real quick and then to Kamrins parents to open our presents from them. There we got a new member to our family. No, I didnt have the baby early. They gave my kids an adorable little guinea pig that the kids named Yoshi. He is so sweet and cute. He loves snuggling me. Ill post pics later. After a very long day we headed home to get to bed since Kamrin had to work the next morning.....or so I thought :-)

He thought his new race track was a chair for him :-)

In their new dress up

Making candy jewelry

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve day we spent most of the day getting the house ready for Santa to come that night. The kids have never cleaned that hard :-) We wrapped presents for our families and then headed to parties. First was a dinner at my brothers house. The food was so so so good! We then went downstairs for our gift exchange. We all got very spoiled as always! We them wemt to Kamrins parents to get our pjs, do our toasts with sparkling ciders which most of the toasts had to do with all these new babies we are adding to our family and also did our brother and sister exchange since Shaless and Jared would be with his family for Christmas. For some reason I didnt take any pictures at his parents :-( I love love love the holidays!! Nothing beats family, yummy food and watching the kids have so much excitement!! We then had to head home to say goodbye to Elfie (my kids cried and cried), put out cookies and milk and go to bed so Santa could come!

Fetal Foto

I have never waited to find out the gender at the mid pregnancy ultrasound the doctor does. Yes. Im THAT inpatient!! Anyways my plan was to go to Fetal Foto the Friday we checked in our hotel for our anniversary celebration and when they were going to do the gender shot I would look away. When we got to the hotel I would suggest we watch a movie and put that dvd in and we could find out together that way. I did something like that with Kamdyn and we found out just us 2 at home without even a tech there and it was really special! Since we got really lucky and got to find out super early on our anniversary I told him about my plan with Fetal Foto and I asked if he thought I should cancel it. He knows how important thing like that are to me and since we didnt get any kind of dvd and only a couple pictures he suggested will postpone the appt a week and still do it so this baby would have a dvd and lots of pics of the gender like our other 3 and it would be part of my Christmas! I was so excited! So I called and moved our appt to the night before Christmas Eve. Just Kamrin, the kids and I went and it was very special. It was also nice to hear from someone else the words "Its a girl!!" So now we are very confident to get rid of all our boy stuff and get lots of bows and dresses in its place :-) She is a very wild monkey! The whole ultrasound she had her legs crossed at her ankles. It was so cute!!

Erilyn Riley Shorts

There is a new addition to the Hammond Clan!! Pashell and Travis welcomed their 1st baby December 22, 2011 at 6:31am! Its a girl! Her name is Erilyn Riley Shorts. She weighed 5 pounds 9 ounces and is 19 1/2 inches. We are SO excited to have this little one in our family! Up until now Kamrin and I have been the only one on his side to have babies so this is very exciting!

Pashell has been measuring small so she has had to go in weekly to have her fluid checked and a stress test on baby. Her fluid was low at first but then went up great for a few weeks. She had her tests yesterday morning then was going to meet us at the salon for Maddies birthday to get pedicures. Baby had different plans. Her fluid was at 12 the week before and dropped all the way to 5 yesterday so for mommy and babys healthy they doctor said it was time to induce labor. They let her leave for a few hours and just told her to be to check in to start being induced at 3pm. We told her to come get a pedicure and get her toes cute for birth and she was all over that. A while back she invited me to be in the room when she had it. I say it because until this morning we had no idea if it was a boy or girl. Anyways I was very excited because although I have given birth 3 times I have never actually seen one. So I got updates throughout the evening and when I put the kids to bed I laid on the couch for a bit and decided I was not going to be able to get any sleep anyways and she seemed to be progressing good so I just headed up to the hospital around 930pm. We waited and waited and got very very tired. Poor girl was having problems with the epidural so was still very uncomfortable. She was a 3 1/2 around 3am but her water had already broke on its on. Of course it was very little due to being so low. So we did alot more waiting and by 5am she was at an 8 in pain out of 10 and thats with the epidural so we called the the nurse and sure enough she was a 10 and ready to push. 5:40am doc showed up and they started the pushing. 6:31am out came baby and we hear "Its a girl" I wont get into detail about birth cause its not mine to tell but my part of the experience was AMAZING! Nothing like seeing a new life come into the world! Yes, I have been through it 3 times and had that amazing part but its very different being in the other side of the bed! Baby Erilyn swallowed ALOT of fluid and was having a hard time breathing so she is in the NICU getting assistance breathing. Mom is doing great. Sure she just wishes she could be with her new baby of course. Im so thankful to Pashell and Travis for letting me be there as the became parents. I already love that little girl and cant wait to be able to actually hold her and love on her when her lungs cooperate! Welcome to the family baby girl!!!

Mommy holding baby right before she headed to the NICU

Maddies 4th Birthday

My little princess diva is 4!! She woke up to Elfie throwing her a little party. He decorated our living room for her. We then took Jaydan to school and stayed for his Christmas sing along. It was SO packed I couldnt get any good pictures and after the kindergarten did their part we left since Maddie couldnt even see and Kamdyn does not do well in big crowds like that. Jaydans class did such a cute job though and I was so happy to see it. We came home and let Maddie play with some new stuff and laid Kamdyn down. After we got Jay we stopped for some lunch and picked Kamrins sister and dropped the boys off to my aunts so we could take Maddie for some girl nail salon time. I got her nails and toes painted. She loved every second of it. Kamrins other sister met up with us and got a pedicure before checking in to the hospital to have her baby! Who doesnt want cute toes when going through labor :-) More on her and baby next post! Anyways so after getting all girly we picked up the boys and headed home for some play time. They played with all their dress up stuff. Maddie even did her makeup. When Kamrin got home we opened her presents and let her pick what she wanted for dinner. She picked Artic Circle. We ate and then she played with her new stuff and we all cuddled up and watched the Christmas movie Prep and Landing which is WAY cute!! Then it was off to bed for the little ones. She was all smile all day!

Maddie,
You bring so much fun and character to our family. There is never a dull moment with you around. You are the most fiesty yet loving, most stubborn yet sweet and the funniest little girl I have ever met in my life. You have daddy wrapped around your finger and have since the day you were born. You are the little mommy to both your brothers even though Jaydan fights you on that daily and your my little diva princess!! We love you so much and are so thankful you are ours!! Happy 4th birthday baby bug!!!

The 2 pregnant sisters :-) Can you believe Pashell (The one in purple) was going in to have her baby just 2 hours after this pic was taken! Teeny tiny belly and of course lucky girl got ZERO stretch marks!!!!

Her cute little toes

Pretty nails

Loved her reaction to EVERY present we gave her :-)

Anniversary Weekend

Friday after my ultrasound I ran a couple errands and went home to pack for our weekend away. Right when Kamrin got home and changed we headed out. We first went on the search for deep fried pickles. We didnt have any luck cause places were either too busy or didnt exist anymore. We then went and checked in our room at The Little America. After checking it all out we went to dinner at the steak house downstairs and it was AMAZING food!! We then went to see the lights at Temple Square and walked through the Deseret Book across the street but it was so packed it didnt last very long. As we were leaving we realized Jane Seymour was there and thats why there was so many people there. She was the voice of the Christmas program this year. We headed back to our warm room and watched tv til we fell asleep. Kamrins parents deliver the papers to The Little America and when we woke up with our paper was 2 boxes of chocolates outside of our door. After being up for a bit our room service breakfast showed up. It was SO YUMMY!! We then decided to go swimming. Big mistake. They have 1 big pool that is half inside and half outside. There is a bridge you swim under to get to the inside/outside. The inside was packed with kids so we figured we would try the outside one since it was heated. It was warm but not quite warm enough for it being 10 degrees outside! Getting out was SO painful too. I honestly about cried those 30 seconds I was soaking wet and outside in 10 degree weather. We are so smart huh :-) We ran to the hot tub and since I didnt want to cook baby girl I just put my legs in and I heated right up! After we sat in there a bit we decided swimming in winter in a crowded place wasnt as fun as we were hoping for so we went back to the room. I took a nice long warm shower and laid down in bed and next thing I knew it was 2 hours later and Kamrin was playing on the computer letting me nap. By then I was STARVING and felt really yucky so I went to the gift shop and luck would have it they had EVERYTHING but Tylenol. They had Tylenol PM but since it was 12:30 in the afternoon and I just took a 2 hour nap I decided that wasnt the best idea. I went back up and got Kamrin and we started out adventures of the day. He had heard of this new amazing toy store in The Grand America so we walked over there to check it out and yes. it was AMAZING. Not your average toy store at all. They had the CUTEST baby girl sock I have ever seen and I could have done alot of damage there for sure. We then checked out the rest of the hotel and headed more downtown. I still hadnt eaten and by that point I was so hungry I was getting sick to my stomach so the first place we came to that sounded good I went for. We found this chinese place and went in just to check the menu out cause it was this tiny little place in the middle of downtown and decided after looking at the menu we would give it a try and Im so glad we did! Their food was amazing and they even had Pho which Kamrin loves and he never gets so we both were very happy campers. After that I found a drug store that had tylenol that cost a million dollars but it was so worth it! We then went shopping all downtown and walked around Gateway until meeting up with his family at Tucanos to eat. We had never been there and so glad we did! It was YUMMY!!!! After eating way too much we headed to Off Broadway Theater to see The Grouch Who Stole Christmas. It was so funny! I love plays like that. Even the actors would say something that wasnt in the script and there was a few time the actors had to stop and have a good laugh. When we got to our hotel there waiting for us was chocolate covered strawberries and raspberry cidar from Kamrins parents. It was the perfect way to end such a great day!!! They are so awesome for doing that for us!! We then got a good nights sleep. Went to a YUMMY breakfast buffet and ate way too much again and checked out and it was back to reality we went. It was such a great way to celebrate 5 years!!!!

The bath was so deep :-)

Room service breakfast the first morning

Best way to end our "trip"

Best I have ever had and cute too!

Even got a rose :-)