Welcome Caleb!!

My one and only belly picture!

 Caleb, our 3rd baby and first boy, arrived March 21, 2014. We are so excited and happy he is a healthy growing boy! There were some big unexpected surprises on his birthday. I should start off by saying none of my deliveries have gone as I expected. With Brooke, I didn't know what to expect (since she was my first) just had an idea of what my prenatal classes and books told me. Thankfully there were no big surprises. With Heather, it was completely opposite of Brooke and I went into labor so fast that I didn't even have time to get an epidural. I thought that same scenario may happen with Caleb so I was prepared a few weeks in advance for his arrival. I had set a date of induction just a couple of days before my actual due date thinking that I wouldn't even make it that far, but if I did then I'd be ready to have the baby. Well, he didn't come early like we thought. So Ryan and I headed to the hospital the morning of March 21 and I was going to be induced. It was a very weird feeling checking in to the hospital since I wasn't in active labor, but believe me I was ready to meet my little man!

Just got the pitocin started and waiting on Dr. Hutcheson to arrive.

We got settled in my L&D room and the nurse got my pitocin started and everything was running according to plan, so far. Once Dr. Hutcheson came and checked me out, she felt that something wasn't right and wanted to get an ultra sound to check everything out. It turned out that Caleb was breech. More specifically frank breech, which is where their feet are above their head and they are folded in half. We had no idea that he was breech and probably for the whole 3rd trimester because I never felt him flip!! And in the 17 week sono, he was in that same position, but we never had any other reason to repeat a sono during my pregnancy so I never had another one. I was still thinking that there was a possibility I could deliver him naturally and asked what my options were. I didn't want to have surgery. (Who does?) I was afraid of the actual surgery and the recovery. I knew what recovery from a natural delivery was like. Dr. H said that her and another doctor could try flipping him. My success rate would be fairly high since he's my 3rd baby and my uterus is stretched out. Dr. Hutcheson had to leave to clear out her clinic and get Dr. Morton on board to help. They got an epidural started and stopped the pitocin. After 3 long excruciating hours and lots of prayers for a healthy delivery, the doctors came back in and tried flipping Caleb. It was really strange having 3 women push with all their might to flip Caleb and all I could feel was pressure. My stomach muscles were very bruised from this event. First they tried turning him to the right. After they got him sideways they put the ultrasound probe back on my stomach and immediately noticed that his heart had stopped and the cord was wrapped around his neck. After letting him go back to the breech position, his vitals returned to normal. Then they tried very quickly to flip him to the left, but his vitals dropped again and decided that he was in too much distress and they had to get him out via c-section. This is not the way I wanted his delivery to go, but I ultimately wanted a healthy baby boy and I would do anything to have that!! Thankfully there was a whole anesthesia/OR staff on hand and waiting to take me back to get him out! It all happened very quickly.

I do remember the surgery, but didn't feel anything and that is a very surreal feeling! I kept trying to look at the reflection in the mirrored edges of the light to get a glimpse, but I couldn't see anything. I was just so happy to hear a healthy cry when he got out.

In the OR waiting to meet Caleb.

 Caleb weighed 7lbs 4 oz and was 21 inches long. He came out screaming and with his legs right up by his head.

Welcome Caleb George Pevey! Born 3/21/14 @ 1:16pm

Daddy bringing him to me for the first time!

Our first meeting!

So sweet!

I look extremely drugged out!

Afterwards, I couldn't stop smiling! He was so perfect! It was such a blessing in disguise that he waited until my induction date because if I had gone into natural delivery it would have been very difficult on him and we might have had more major complications!

Our family of 5! So blessed! (The girls are not distracted by the TV at all...)

Nana and Poppy meeting Caleb for the first time.

Big Mama meeting Caleb.

G-Dad meeting Caleb and he even got a smile!

Aunt Stacy, Uncle Nonga, and Jason meeting Caleb.

Peaceful

Getting ready to head home! I look so handsome!

Finally home!

Beautiful flowers my parents and Ryan's office got me.

The door hanger that I made all completed.

Big sisters admiring their new brother.

Dimple!!

So sweet! Great Granny meeting Caleb for the first time!

Such a good helper.

So excited to hold Caleb.

Finally get to meet my other cousin, Hannah. Sorry I was in the nursery when you came to the hospital.

Perfect blessings!

Halloween 2013

There is no shortage of festivals and pumpkin patches around here during the Fall/Halloween season!

We took full advantage of what was going on and I had many pictures. First, my best friend from high school, Kyla, was in town for a visit and we met up at Calie's acre to check out their pumpkin patch and catch up! It was such a fun day.

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Then we headed to Ellis Pottery for their fall fest. This years theme was Whoville and it was cute. Local schools will decorate pumpkins and enter them in a contest so it is fun to see all the pumpkin displays and have the girls play in their hay maze.

We headed back to Calie's acre. This time with our cousins and aunts. It was fun to see them playing together!

This was our first year to attend boo at the zoo. It was fun. They had zookeepers holding some of the animals so you could get an up close look and there were lots of games along the way that the kids could earn prizes.

We went to our church's annual fall fest. The kids always have a blast getting their faces painted and playing lots of games.

Then it was time to carve pumpkins!! Brooke loved that and was thoroughly involved this year and even wanted a super detailed pumpkin carving involving Captain Hook and Peter Pan sword fighting. Well, this was the best design I could find and I even had to buy a special pumpkin carving tools to finish it. I love carving pumpkins too, but with the baby pumpkin and Brooke's special pumpkin I had my work cut out for me! Heather, as usual, wasn't interested in digging out the pulp, but loved her Cinderella pumpkin!!

Finally, the girls had their school parade. They loved dressing up and usually they march around the outside of the school, but due to rainy conditions it was held in the gym and sorry for the blurry pictures they were moving so fast my camera couldn't focus.  

**3rd time is the Charm**

 We found out I was pregnant with our 3rd child the day before my birthday, July 2013. I didn't expect to be pregnant so fast since we had only been trying for 2.5 weeks. One of the first things I did was order some BIG sister shirts on Etsy and took some pictures to reveal the good news to our family.

 October 17, 2013 we found out it was a boy!! Much to our surprise because, my pregnancy wasn't any different from my previous ones and we had convinced ourselves that we were going to have 3 girls! Which we would have been happy with as well, but we are so blessed to have a boy and get the best of both worlds!! Since, it was so close to Halloween, I decided to carve a pumpkin. This was a difficult pumpkin to carve, but I hand traced it and carved it myself!!

I know I've been way behind on blog posts. I'm going to try and work really hard over the next few weeks to catch up. Mainly so that my 3rd child doesn't feel like he never got any posts about his infancy!! So, bare with me as I catch up!

Heather's 3rd Birthday

Better late than never....
Heather is 3!!

She is my princess girl and wanted a Cinderella themed party!

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Cinderella brought her a special tiara and sash!

We sent a letter to Disney world and she got a card back signed by all the princesses!!

Super happy birthday girl!

I can't believe you're 3!! Time has passed so quickly!

You are my social butterfly! You can talk to anyone and make friends easily! You love to play dress up and princess all the time. Your favorite toys are baby dolls and barbie dolls. You have a lot of determination and will to do what you want when you want. This drive will be a great character trait as an adult! I love your sincere personality! You make me smile when I think of you. I can't wait to see what the year ahead brings.

You are wearing 3T clothes, size 8 shoes, and are mostly potty trained.

Happy Birthday to my princess!!

Road Trip 2013

We decided to take a road trip to visit my Nana in North Carolina this summer. We traveled 10 days and did lots of things on the way to and the way back from my nana's.

This was the girls first time to be in the car for such a long time, so I did plenty of prep work ahead of time to make sure they had lots to entertain, so we wouldn't (hopefully) have to endure whining!! Lots of new DVDs helped the most. I pinned several things from pinterest to entertain them, like taking toilet paper rolls and writing their names on them then also writing their names on stickers and they had to match the stickers to the rolls.

Then I also took several pictures of lego formations and put those in zip top bags and they had to build the formation with the blocks.

I was hoping these would entertain for at least a good 30 minutes, but both only lasted 2-5 minutes at best, oh well! The best entertaining stuff was books, coloring books, crayola wonder markers, scratch drawings, little toys, and of course movies!!! I also packed an assortment of snacks and juice drinks. I brought their sippy cups and filled those up with milk when I got a chance, but I was only able to really wash them in a dishwasher once during the trip and they were pretty rank by the time we got home. For the future, I think I will pack individual milk containers (like Horizon makes), juice, and not put the effort into making crafts. But that being said, all in all, the girls did fantastic and I was really impressed with the way they held up to napping (very little) in the car and moving from place to place.

We started off on a Friday traveling towards Atlanta, GA. We had to wait until Ryan got off work, so we weren't sure how far we were going to make it that night. We didn't reserve a hotel room with the hopes that we would find one along the way. It turns out about 4hrs into our travel we made it past Monroe and then we hit some tire debris from an 18 wheeler in the road and had a flat as a result. Despite it being extremely terrifying changing a tire on the side of the interstate, we made it safely to a hotel located in Meridian, MS next to a mall with a Sears, so that Ryan could take the spare to be changed the next morning.

I may have let the kids go a little wild in the hotel the next morning while we were waiting....

Then we were off to Atlanta, GA. We made good time and decided to visit the Aquarium in downtown Atlanta. It was such a neat place! The girls had a blast! They loved seeing all the fish and especially the octopus, although it seems we didn't get a picture of that.

An albino alligator

This is a whale shark that looks like its about to eat Brooke, but it's actually just a giant poster!

Daddy and the girls "under" the water!

The next morning we went to the Coke museum! I had so much fun there. I've been collecting glass coke bottles since I was a teenager, so I was really interested in the history. I have always wanted to visit!

Notice the coke pharmacy sign...

The girls with the coke polar bear

A coke syrup urn from 1896.

The olympic torch from 1996, but Brooke did NOT want her pic taken!

Then we were off to North Carolina. This was the worst driving day of our trip. There was torrential rain the whole way! I was driving and Ryan was navigating. I think we were white knuckling it the whole way! The storm was just following us all the way to my Nana's. We finally made it in time for dinner and met up with my parents, my nana, and my brother and his family! The kids even got to catch fireflies after dinner! This was a super special treat because we rarely see them where we live and definitely not as big!

Daddy showing them what a firefly looks like.

On the hunt!

Brooke and her collection.

She even found a lady bug.

The next day we just chatted and visited with family. My aunt and her family came over and we all got to catch up. We also had some professional pictures done of that whole side of our family! It was really special to see my Nana so happy!! 

Great Nana and all her great grandkids

Great Nana and her "grown up" grandkids

The whole family

Ryan took a few pictures of the inside of my Nana's house. This was the "no no" room for kids while I was growing up. I actually felt naughty standing in there! But there are a lot of memories from when I was little and we would just try to sneak in here...

 

The next day my brother's family and ours went to a local kids museum and then out to lunch before heading back to my Nana's.

There was this cool bean stalk that the kids could climb up the leaves to the second floor! I love that Ethan was excited, but Andrew had a terrified look on his face!

Brooke didn't even want to try and Heather wouldn't move off the first leaf.

Milking a cow

All fishing!

After naps, we had a huge family gathering and ate dinner and visited.
That night we headed to Ashville, NC. The next day we visited the Biltmore Estate. It was fabulous. Everything was so huge and elegant. I couldn't imagine raising a family in a house with over 4 acres of flooring (yes you read that correctly) and over 90,000 acres of land!!! Brooke and Heather thought it was Cinderella's castle!

On the buggy in the stables

Riding the tractor

Then we headed to pigeon forge where we had rented a cabin for a couple of days. We did some hiking in the Great Smokey Mountains.

Water mill where we got some fresh milled corn meal.

Since this land was occupied before it was declared as a national park there are still many cabins, churches, and schools located throughout the park. Some of them you can still tour. It was really neat.

The morning we were about to embark on our 12hr car ride!

After that we spent the whole day (12hrs) driving to Hot Springs, AK. The girls did great in the car with all the entertainment I had packed plus a few surprises. We stopped for lunch in Nashville and ate BBQ in a park that had a full size replica of The Parthenon from Athens. It was a great spot to stretch our legs and run around for a little while.

After lunch, I surprised the girls with their special hats. Sorry the picture is blurry, but this the only one I got. Brooke got an astronauts hat and Heather got a princess hat.

Then we stopped in Memphis for dinner and walked around on Beale street. We ate at the blues city cafe which had fantastic ribs!

We spent the next day doing things in Hot Springs. We visited the Mid America science museum and the girls loved playing with all the exhibits. There was even a Tesla electric show, which Brooke was terrified to watch and Heather enjoyed!

Watching the giant turtles under the bridge.

One of two in existence of Rowland Emett's  The Featherstone-Kite Openwork Basketweave Mark Two Gentleman’s Flying Machine.

We also visited the Garven Gardens before heading back home. It was sprinkling, so we borrowed some of their umbrellas, but it was a beautiful place and their feature exhibit was blown glass infused with the flora. It really turned out to be much prettier than I expected.

A beautiful chapel used for weddings in the garden.

We had a fabulous trip and I hope it was memorable for Brooke! I can't wait to take another!!