All about Zachary

Well here is part of our celebration as a family with Z. He turned two on the 27th of April. He is such a carefree little guy and we just love how much joy he has added to our family.

So a quick update on his legs. We took him for his annual well child appointment and the doctor said he also has knock knees and that this part of the condition may be worse than the pigeon toe. Because knock knee can almost always be helped with physical therapy he reffered us to the one in Portage where I took him for his initial visit. The therapist took the full hour and watched him as he walked and played. Felt his joints and moved his legs. She ended our session by giving me suggestions on excercises but said that it would be pointless to have him come in and to wait until we speak to the Orthopedic Pediatric people. I am not sure what that meant but we will see in June. Keep us in your prayers!

the freedom of childhood!

Yesterday the sun was shining, where Thursday it was pouring rain. Yesterday the children swung as high as the chains allowed, picked every ripe dandelion, pretend games seemed so real to them and the carefree spirit filled the air and overflowed into my heart! Ofcourse, I had the same feeling Thursday when I heard them belly laughing as they danced in the rain. The simple joy of childhood. I am glad that I get to revisit it!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_SbgXGBmaI

Winter update...

Yeah I had to make it a winter update because I don't remember the last time I updated everyone for real. Ok I am just going to run it down like a Christmas letter haha!

Matthew- Has started the accelerated nursing program and has one class (microbiology) under his belt. It is accelerated in the fact that it is self paced so for that class he read the course material through twice and schedule the test and took it. He is now on to anatomy and physiology(sp!) and that he says will take him a little longer because there is so much more content to learn. Anyways the hope is to have it accomplished in a year so that he can get his RN and move on to an ER setting. Don't know if we will like that much yet but we will see :)
He is also busy doing projects!!! YEAH! He just finished the new play center for the kids and they adore it! I will post a picture tomorrow because I am running on borrowed time here. He is going up in April to remodel the cabin bathroom so that we can have a nice new space in there when the kids and I get to go up. There was some moisture issues that needed to be dealt with.

Me- Well I am doing the same ole thing. I am schooling the kids in the mornings, then doing all the other mom and wife stuff in the afternoons. My projects are on hold but that is ok because I am trying to get down the routine thing good before I take on extras. I did start my exercising about six weeks ago but became very ill with an infection so I am really on week five of my goal sheet. Looks like we will be done with school the first week of May so I will get to start my extra projects then. I started back to work for a little bit at a time. I completed a whole shift this week and Matthew said that Kendra did great. So it looks like I am ok to pick up full shifts now sometimes.

Andrea and Kayla are still doing school and doing well. Math runs a little fast paced but we have been working hard to understand things well before moving on. We are having some neighborhood girl issues still so that has been hard to deal with...ah the joys of having girls :)

Alexis is well Alexis. :) She is enjoying playing dolls and dress up like normal. She is going to get the opportunity to be a flower girl in May so she is super excited about that though she has not figured out the difference between being IN a wedding and getting married HAHA brings many laughs when she says she has a pretty princess dress for when she marries Joe :)

Zachary, Ah my little prince...well he is doing great terrorizing everything and everyone in true little boy fashion. I had some concerns about his health a while ago and finally had Matthew take him in to the doctor. He was walking funny and had a lump on his neck. Apparently the lump is nothing to worry about though they did no scans or anything just felt it. I am getting a third opinion when he goes for a well child check the end of April but the first two docs say it is nothing to worry myself over. The walking thing is a problem though. Our son has pigeon toeing of the right foot. Well knee really. anyways it curves inward and causes him to fall alot and it is not quite right. There are only two options and if my Internet research is right then it means surgery. He has an appt with the Orthopedic Pediatric specialist on June 8th to determine a course of action. I am terrified!

Kendra, is doing great. Her tummy issues from birth are much better and she has been a super good baby other than the sleeping at night and in her own bed thing. She still gets up alot at night and is very clingy but she is doing better and better....either that or I am accustomed to the sleep deprivation a little better than when she was first born :)

New house, Sitting outside my front door is a large pile of items from Home Depot that our contractor had delivered. We are having a new entry put on this house and I am so excited! It is only an 8x8 addition but it will be warm and dry and a way to get in before having to choose whether you will be going up to the main living areas or down to the private ones. It will hopefully cut back on my dirt and water tracking issues and then we will be able to carpet the steps and hopefully eliminate some falls that all of us have been having.

Cabin, Cabin trips will officially resume in May though Matthew is going up earlier as I stated before. We have alot of work we are planning on doing this year. Bathroom, deck railing, roof, insulation, siding, garage....yeah alot of things so we will see what we get done. I am very excited to see the improvements on our little haven!

Ok well that is all for now. I am off to bed because the baby is out cold and I am done for the day! Post that picture of the play center tomorrow!

Alexis and Andrea's pics.

Alexis was the first to go out with dad. She is is "fishin buddy!" and recieved a beautiful pink pole from uncle Jim just for the ice fishing occasions. Had to try it out ya know

 Andrea had good success as well these are her fish!

Alexis is always at dad's side when fish are involved

Kayla's pics are not uploaded yet...will post those another time :)

Kendra's first month

Well it has been an interesting month to say the least. We have had little sleep, lots of screaming, sickness, and then there are the good days where life goes on like normal. Kendra has a few tummy issues still but over all we hope she is settling down and not going to be as irritable as I slowly figure out what foods are making her gassy. We do seem to be getting enough sleep now to have some projects get done. I have hung more curtains, gotten the kitchen painted, and am in the process of weeding through lots of clothing (mine!) I have finally felt good enough to start my excercising again so hopefully the scale won't tip too heavy at my six week appt.
Matthew has had a lot of fun taking the girls out fishing. They each have daddy time and so far each has come home with some sort of trophy. I will post pics of fish later because my batteries died in the camera and I have been to busy to plug in the charger.
Other than figuring out life with five kids we have had a successful start to the new year with our schooling. We started in our books a month after everyone due to my procrastination in ordering new materials...we are now only about two weeks behind due to some nice snowy cold days that the kids didn't wish to play outside on. My hope is to get us to where we should be so that I can end our school year on May 1st.

Other than that it is business as usual, cooking, cleaning, and doing gobs and gobs of laundry ;) LOL! 

Our birth story for Kendra

Kendra Jane Harry born 12-20-10 at 9:08am weighed in at 9lbs 9 ou and 21 inches long...

Sunday was a crazy morning because we had our childrens program for the morning service. So we got the kids all ready and went in to church where they did a great job on their program. I got the million questions about when I was going to have my baby and how much longer did I think I had and well you all know the well meaning questions that leave you all depressed and irritable... After leaving church we did a quick lunch and I put the kids to bed. Matthew went to work in Fennville shortly after he left I had my first noticably real contraction. I packed my bag, cleaned up a few things and played with the kids. I waited until midnight to tell Matthew that I was in labor and told him to expect a call sometime before his shift was supposed to end. He apparently tried to sleep but had several calls during the night leaving him exhausted. I semi slept through the contractions until about four in the morning when I couldn't ignore them anymore and decided to take a bath to decide when to call Matthew. I ended up calling him at 4:45am and He came home with his sister who graciously had gotten up to watch the kids. We made our way to the hospital very slowly because of a few slow pokes in front of us. I didn't really mind because I knew I had called him home with plenty of time but I was concerned that maybe I had asked him home too early. My fear of being embarrassed came to fruition when they checked me and I was only at a 3! I was mortified that I had called him home for a 3! He then proceeded to make fun of me (playfully ofcourse) as we walked the hallway. About an hour later they moved me to my room but still had not rechecked me despite promises to do so. I had a major increase in pain and the distance had closed between contractions to 2 1/2 minutes. The nurse put the iv in and put in ther blood work for my epi. I remember that I looked at Matthew and said " they are not going to make it. I feel like I did when I was at the end with Kayla" Matthew and I had already made our wager as to what time Kendra would be born so when fourty minutes later the iv was finished and the blood work back and they decided to finally check me to see which type of shot to give me I was already at 9.5cm and bulging.I figured as much since I was already violently shaking, and crying and carrying on like an infant myself...happened each time I went drug free. They gave me the option to try to get the shot by not pushing for as long as possible but after talking to Matthew for a few seconds we decided that it probably wouldn't take effect in time anyways and to just push. The doc broke my water and told me to push. Only minutes later she was out and I was embarrassed once again as I had made way too much noise, in my defense it hurt like crazy! She and I sat together for about an hour before I went to the tub and she got cleaned up. So that is about it for the birth. From 3-10 in two hours was a little too fast and yet Matthew stopped making fun of me for calling him home early. He was such a great support during labor and delivery and made sure that the kids were able to get to the hospital to see the new baby. The kids were all thrilled and seem to continue to be happy and in love with their new sister.
 

We are so happy that Kendra made it in time for Christmas. She made our celebration that much sweeter as our family was able to gather around her and moon over her. She is absolutely beautiful!

Count down to new baby!

Ok so I am 18 days away from my due date and I am very ready to be done with pregancy and finally meet this little girl! I just finished up a few more online purchases and have been pretty proud of how type A I have been in wrapping them as they show up to the house. I did run out of actual wrapping paper and started using the brown packing paper for the kids gifts. How sad is that! I was even tempted to use newspaper! Goes to show how desperate I am to make sure that everything is ready for the other kids since focus seems to be school and baby. I am hoping beyond hope that the little one arrives a few days earlier than expected so that we can all enjoy our holiday plans at home. Seems like the hospital would not be the most fun "field trip" on Christmas day for the children...anyways I am looking forward to posting pics of her and her stats for you all as soon as she is here and I am able to get a few minutes to use the laptop.