A Hunting We Will Go

Earlier this month...before Everly turned a month and even before the 2nd annual Grantsville Electric Parade because clearly I find it important to blog the Brown family happenings in order, we bundled up our girlies (still seems a little crazy to say girl in the plural form because we now have 2 super cute Littles) in sweaters, coats, gloves and boots and headed to the mountains for a hunt, a hunt for our Christmas tree.

 

 This silly little outing ended up taking us al1 day and 5 different tree pickin' places. The first was in Mountain Green. Not one of us, between my parents, my bro's family and us, found a tree we liked so it was off to the 2nd place which was also in Mountain Green, success...for my parents



No one else found one we liked but we did take a moment to capture our little, mountain adventure.

 We headed back down the mountain and what a sad day because we were actually going to get our tree from a Christmas tree lot :(

Not the first lot we went to, the trees were like $85.00. YIKES. We did get some cute photo ops though.

Super cute kids, super cute snowman made out of tree stumps.

It was chilly enough in the mountains for pink gloves, owl beanies, and light up princess boots but at the tree lots we all looked like a bunch of crazies bundled up because it just wasn't that cold, in fact it was perfect weather.

 

 We couldn't pass up the mistletoe. I didn't have to force Chris for a little smooch but I did have to force him to pose for the camera. We are making cute memories buddy, so you will pose for the camera and like it! 

 

Ahhh cute memories. See the cute, little baby Ever's head in the picture. Ahhhh cute!

Yes, wonderful memories but still no Christmas tree. So off to the Smith's parking lot. Nope, still nope.

So we were off to the old King's parking lot

Yay! We had our Christmas tree and I got this picture of all the little hunters before my camera died.

This little adventure was more like a wild goose chase rather than a Christmas tree hunt.

 

 

 

Lovely Everly

My one month Babylove is getting so big! 

This picture drives my OCD crazy because on the "love to" section I added /ing/. What was I thinking. "Loves to smiling" ...awesome. Guess it doesn't drive me so crazy because I was too lazy to change it :) But look at that perfect baby girl.



Electric

Her bright, blue eyes shinning as she jumped onto the porch, bathed in Grandma's Christmas lights, " oh my goodness, it's beautiful."

Christmas through the eyes of our lively little Angel just could not get any better! It is just so darn fun!

(Now that looks like fun splattered all down main street in Grantsville or quite possibly it could be Harry Potter casting a spell on my beautiful baby girl, the verdict is still out on that one.)

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, we had a celebratory dinner at Grandma Brown's house and then we bundled up and moved the troops out. All the cousins marched down to Christmas central, aka main street in Grantsville. Main street just happens to be home of the one and only stop light in the town. In case you were wondering, I know you were. Look at these gems of knowledge hidden upon the pages of my blog.

Anyway, We took a little saunter down to main street. Man, it was a beautiful night! The light crisp air kissing my nose, a sweet, baby girl hugging close, my warm bodied hubby close by and our silly 2 1/2 yr. old so full of excitement it was palpable as she flitted and fluttered down the sidewalk.

As we traveled the 50 yards to main street...it's Grantsville, everything is just 50 yrds away, we asked the Little Love what Santa was going to bring her. She informed us matter of factly that Santa was bringing her a piggy bank. "What would you do with a piggy bank?"
"I will put my monies in it and shake it." well, duh, what else would you do with a piggy bank?

The whole gang lined up on the curb

waiting

And watching

Yay!!! The 2nd annual  Granstville Christmas Light Parade

It was awesome! Nory had so much fun picking up hot chocolate packages, candy canes, and glow sticks that were being thrown out to the kiddos.

 Little Ever cried and then slept cuddled up warm in her moby wrap knock off, my coat, and her blanket.

 Of course the big man made his way through town on the back of the shiny fire truck

As Santa drove by, Elanora looked up at us with her big ,confused, blue eyes and said "Where did my piggy bank goes?" We had to explain to her that Santa was going to bring it to her house on Christmas day and then with Christmas lights in our eyes we skipped and hopped down the street, back to Grandma's house. Oh boy,  life is fun!

 

  

Everly: The Birth Story part 2

 Day 2 and Yay, we were ready to have a baby. We had been in a small hospital room all night watching our Little Love's heart rate dropping over and over again and having horrible pre labor contractions. Holy Hannah those had to be real labor contractions.

 

 Finally, we were upgraded to the big nice delivery room and ready to get this show on the road. I definitely wanted to start this show off a little better than the night before had finished. You know what that means? Drugs!!! I was emotionally and physically spent and ready for that liquid gold shot into my spine by way of a crazy, huge needle and equally crazy, long tube inserted in my back. Ah modern medicine is wonderful!

When my amazing Dr. watched through the door I said, "I'm a wuss I didn't make it. I had the epidural." Being the awesome Dr. she is, she replied, "You don't get a medal for going natural, your children could care less." Then she broke my water, which had meconium in it, again, man I have poopy kids! That meant the NICU people had to be in the room when the cute baby was delivered in case they needed to suction her lungs (Everly and Elanora are already twinners).

With my lower half adequately numb and my water broke I was definitely ready to have my baby... or maybe I should stop having contractions all together because we had just had the longest night of our lives, how about making it longest day of our lives.  So at this point I was numb, no longer having contractions and still having to watch my beautiful baby's heart rate drop over and over again. Chris and I would drift off to sleep listening to the beep, beep, beep of the baby's heart monitor and then the beep would slow way down and we would jump awake to stare at the monitor to watch her heart rate drop yet again.

Luckily for us we have an amazing Doctor that we trust completely. We were also blessed to have the most amazing nurse. 



(I still can't get over how fluffy I was)

She was definitely heaven sent. It was her day off but the hospital was so busy they called her in (and there I was taking up hospital space and not in labor, awesome. I bet they loved me). I am so grateful she came in. I don't know how many patients she had that day but I know she came in just for me. She helped Chris and I through something horribly scary with her 'nursing know how' and her sense of humor.

They wanted to give me Pitocin so we could get the Babylove out safe and sound but unfortunately they couldn't until her heart was stable for at least 30 minutes. At one point she waited until 29 long minutes had gone by and then, sure enough her heart dropped. Crazy baby!

Man this story is a mouthful, I guess technically a blog post full...Lame attempt at a joke to keep the audience reading. I usually like to have more pictures and even though we had both the camera and video camera and I had planned to do some fun interviews of everyone waiting patiently for Everly to get here, we were, at this point, a little nervous, not knowing whether or not she would actually get here and we definitely didn't want to document that. So no pictures yet.


They were trying all kinds of things, hydrating me (still), having me wear an oxygen mask, I even had to have blood pressure meds because mine wasn't doing to well at one point...not sure why, I wasn't that stressed :), they even added water back inside me because my water had been broke and they hoped it would chill the baby girlie out to have her water back. Nope.

It was getting a little critical that we get things moving along so the Dr. decided to do a test run of Pitocin. They didn't turn it all the way up, or whatever term is used to describe how they control how much Pitocin I'm getting. I remember them saying to turn it on to a 4...I think. I started having contractions right away and right along with the contractions, her heart rate dropped so low I couldn't hear the monitor beeping. They shut off the Pitocin and scrambled to find a heart beat. Chris was watching the monitor and said her heart was beating once every 3 seconds or something like that.

Everything calmed down and contractions stopped and Little Love's heart got back on track. The nurse looked at us and said, "Get ready, pretty sure you'll need a C-section." They were sure she was tangled in the umbilical cord which was causing all the trouble.
 
They gave Chris an awesome, flattering blue suit to put on, hat and booties included. Luckily for him, he can rock any outfit. Now I'm not a crier. My cold, cold heart doesn't allow it. But, at that moment I was a basket case. I couldn't stop crying. Not because I was worried about having a C-section but because I had just watched my child's heart almost stop.  We were tired and stressed to the max. Chris and a random man my mom tracked down in the hospital gave me a blessing. In the blessing Chris asked that the nurses and Dr. would have an open mind so that they would know what to do...not exact verbiage but you get the point.

This is when things get interesting. The nurse came in and said, "Okay, Julia wants to try one more thing." They proceeded to put me in the stirrups and then moved my bed to the most upright position it could go. Crazy. The nurse told Chris he had to hold me so I wouldn't fall out (numb lower half and all). She told him if I fell out of the bed she would have to do a lot of paper work. Did I mention she was awesome? They were hoping gravity would work. The Dr. said to put the Pitocin on 2. The nurse was nervous because she had just watched my baby's heart about stop so she said she would start with 1.  Gravity and a little Pitocin did the work. At 3:00pm our beautiful baby girl was born

They were right when they said she was wrapped in the umbilical cord. But it was crazy how wrapped she was. The cord was wrapped around her neck, arm and leg. My Dr. needed help untangling her. Obviously Everly was doing backflips in my tummy. My belly was huge so the Little Lamb had plenty of room. As they were cleaning her up, we learned just what a miracle our little Ever is. Her umbilical cord was not only wrapped all around that baby but is was disintegrating and not fully developed. The nurse patted me on the shoulder and said," Man you're lucky to have her here."
 She was only 5 lbs.11 oz. Her umbilical cord or lack thereof, was the reason she was  smaller.

The scariest/happiest moment of our lives ended with this beautiful baby... and wickedly awesome bedhead.