Please Welcome Baron David Bitter

(one day old)

Ok, ok....I know it doesn't take very long to make a blog post. I'm crazy behind on my blog, but what am I NOT behind on these days....seriously. Besides having my baby 3 1/2 weeks early, I still had some portrait sittings to edit after I had him, so I've been a little overwhelmed lately. My photography workload is slowing down finally and I can think about Christmas and my darling new "baby bear". Here are some details in a nutshell....

I had a baby shower on the 19th, went to see Twilight on the 21st and my water broke after church while napping on the 23rd. We got the the hospital around 4pm, in a great mood I might add. I got potocin (sp?) and began contractions, I breathed through them for a while then decided I was ready for my epidural. Unfortanately, the contractions got really painful really fast, too fast for the anestheseologist to give me my epidural. He ended up flying out in one push ....au naturale!! He was 5lbs 15 oz, 18 in. long. born at 7:40pm. That was definately the most pain I ever remember feeling, but it was over pretty quickly and my recovery has been amazingly fast. I really only had to recover from some muscle aches for the first week. He's been such a sweet little guy. Didn't nurse that well in the beginning but he's doing much better now. His brothers ALL adore him, in fact they fight over getting to hold him and kiss his head. We've been so blessed with our fifth and final boy!

Noah's eye surgery!

I haven't posted for a while because I've been busy taking care of everyone!! We're still working on Dave's leg, but I'll post later about that. Meanwhile, we've finally had Noah's eye surgery done.

On October 1st, we went to the surgery center at 7am. We simply told Noah that Dr. Satterfield was going to fix his eyes. We didn't want to scare him too much or he'd never come with us. He was actually pretty excited, he really didn't have a clue what was coming.

Here is Noah in the waiting room when we first got there. He was just his happy little self, like usual. You may notice his left eye is not centered like the right. That is why we're having the surgery, to tighten up the muscle that has slipped back and won't allow his eye to go much farther.

He's always so happy we just love our little Noah. This is his second eye surgery, his first was when he was 1 yr. old.
After a while they brought us back to another waiting room where we dressed him for surgery and he got to watch a movie on his own little DVD player while we waited for the "silly juice" to come.

We told Noah they would give him some "silly juice" to drink that would make him silly. He was pretty excited about that...until he tasted it. YUCK! He spit it out! They ended up having to shoot it up his nose to be absorbed through the membrane, it actually works faster that way anyway. He wasn't so happy about that, but he calmed down fast and kept watching his movie. He eventually got really sleepy and limp. His speech was slurred and he was talking about weird stuff. He was ready for his anesthesia! They took him away and got started. We were a little nervous, of course, but we've done this before.

The surgery took about an hour and then his recovery from the anesthesia took about 45 minutes or so. He was not happy when he first woke up. He was very mad in fact, and probably in pain. I felt a little guilty for not letting him know what was going to happen, but he never would have cooperated otherwise. He fell back asleep quickly (with some help) and when he woke up the second time he was much happier. He was, however a little nervous when he saw 2 Mommys. "Mom, look behind you!!" I looked and saw a mural on the wall... "No, mommy! Who's that behind you?!!" He was really scared at first. We had to explain to him that since they fixed his eyes they were being a little silly right now. He would see 2 Mommys and 2 Daddys for a while. Eventually, he thought it was hilarious and that's all he talked about the whole way home! "Look, there's two cars, look there's two carseats!"
Here is his eye after the surgery. The Dr. decided it was only necessary to operate on the left eye, that should fix the problem. He was pretty happy when we got home, not complaining or in lots of pain. He was just so in awe that there were two of everything. It made him a little clumsy though. He couldn't walk well and was bumping into things. Still happy though.
We bought him a toy at Target and an Icee. That made him feel pretty special. His recovery has been great. His eye is slowly looking more normal and he's seeing better now. In a few weeks he should be all better!!

What has Dave been up to you ask???

Dave is a busy guy, usually. However, because of his virus and leg infection he hasn't been into work since last Wednesday. So, many of you have been asking...."So what is he doing all day?". I caught him while he wasn't looking and got a picture to show everyone what an awesome husband I have. Here he is, stuck, immobile on the couch....he could be playing video games, watching TV, movies, etc..... What is he doing you say??? He's reading Eclipse, the 3rd book in the Twilight series!! He told me he was having Vampire/Werewolf dreams last night. He also was dreaming of an X-men guy that was a vampire and caught bad guys for the government.
Trust me, he's as manly as they get. He really likes the books though. But for different reasons than most women do, he likes the superhuman characters and all the action. He complains about how annoying Bella can be sometimes and how melodramatic she is. (In her defense, I think anyone would get a little dramatic amidst life with vampires and werewolves....)

Dave and I actually have great "Twilight series" discussions sometimes. I appreciate that he's interested in something I'm interested in. Depending on when he gets better and goes back to work, he may get Breaking Dawn finished!!

*************************************************************************************** I just thought I'd add a couple pictures of the kids. Noah fell asleep in this weird position at the dinner table last night. I couldn't believe he was possibly comfortable. He'd had a long day though.
This is a cool Lego pit that Logan built for the Lego Magazine's Cool Creations. He had me take a few pictures to send into the magazine. This one has Mason in it, but he didn't help Logan make it. Roman promptly destroyed it after only a few hours. It's been rebuilt a few times now, thanks to Roman's destructive nature.

The moral?....Wash your cuts boys & girls!!

WARNING: SOME GRAPHIC PICTURES OF MY HUSBANDS NAKED LEG. ALSO A LOOONG STORY TO GO WITH IT.......

Many of you know that Dave is an avid mountain biker. He rides just about every Saturday morning at 6am with a group of friends. He took advantage of his extra day off work last Monday and went riding that morning with two other guys. Its not weird for the guys to take a fall now and then when they hit a jump wrong. Dave actually doesn't bail very often. This trip, he took a jump wrong and his pedal swung back and smacked him right hard in the shin. It hurt pretty bad but just barely broke the skin. Not a big deal for a mountain biking accident. He walked it off. It began to throb a bit at work on Tuesday but he even played basketball that night.

He ended up with some kind of virus that hit him that night around 11pm. He began throwing up and continued for 7 hours, getting up about every 45 minutes or so. He was stuck in bed Wednesday and Thursday recouperating from this GI bug. All the while, his leg is starting to feel worse everyday. Thursday night he was able to hold down his food finally but now he couldn't move his leg enough to even get up and walk to the bathroom. He was crawling on the floor to get there. It had swollen up pretty bad and we couldn't figure out what was going on...was it just bruised really bad? Had he possibly cracked the bone? Wouldn't that have hurt bad right away instead of waiting days to happen? It was bad enough Thursday, that I made him a docter's appt. for Friday morning. He could barely get to the bathroom, we decided he'd need some crutches to help get him to the car and to the Dr.s office. (A HUGE thank you to all the ward members willing to give us crutches in such short notice!) It took him about 45 minutes to get downstairs to shower and get dressed and into the car, this usually only takes him about 10 minutes. So the docter took a look at his leg and seemed pretty concerned. It hadn't even occured to us that his leg was infected, but that's the diagnosis. Even though his scrapes from the biking accident were minimal, they were big enough to get some bad bacteria in there. His whole right leg from the knee down was red and swollen from his small cuts getting infected. The Dr. prescribed an antibiotic and some Vicodin for the pain. WOW, I can't believe this is all from an infected scrape. He can't walk, he can't go up and down the stairs, it takes him a good 10 minutes to get himself to the bathroom a few feet away.
(this is his ankle all swollen, it looked much worse yesterday. Notice you can't even see the bone.)

This has been quite an experience for me. I have a hard enough time being 6 months pregnant and taking care of all the kids needs. Now I've got Dave to take care of too. It doesn't matter that my back hurts from going up and down the stairs so much, that I was getting up in the middle of the night to take care of Dave's needs and not getting to nap later. I'm not complaining, it's just a bit exhausting. My house looks like it was hit by Hurricane Gustav, but that's okay, taking care of my family is more important. Charity truly is the pure love of Christ. I am grateful for the opportunity to gain a testimony of service and charity through serving my husband. I'm so grateful for those who were inspired to help our family at this time of need. My sweet visiting teacher Vanessa brought us dinner last night and my neighbor Hilari brought us dinner that I could freeze and I'll use on Sunday. My wonderful mom took Logan and Mason to the movies last night to get them off my hands, that was so helpful.
Unfortunately, this isn't over. He's getting better but these kind of infections don't go away over night. The Vicodin isn't working that well either so he's still in a lot of pain. He should be better by the end of next week hopefully. We appreciate all of your prayers!
(These pics don't really do his infection justice, my White Balance was a bit off I think. It's much more red than it appears in the picture. )

My little Scout!

Logan is our first boy scout. He actually started in June but we didn't end up getting his uniform until a couple weekends ago. This was the first meeting he got to wear his uniform to. He looks so handsome and he just loved wearing it. No joke...he wears his scout hat to bed every night! He wants to wear it to school too but I told him I don't want it to get lost. I've still got lots of patches to sew on but you get the idea. He's doing great in scouts so far. With Daddy's help, he's moving quickly through the Wolf scout book, passing off all kinds of badges. He'll be an Eagle Scout in no time!
I just had to include this picture. Noah is such a sweet brother. Instead of being jealous of his older brothers' activities he is excited for them. This day was actually scouts for Logan and Mason's first soccer practice. Noah was so excited for both of them. He keeps talking about how he'll turn 8 and get to go to scouts. He loves seeing his brothers doing fun stuff.

The end of the summer.....

This is kind of a random picture but I kept wanting to blog it so here's my excuse. Logan, Mason, and Noah went to a primary Pioneer Day activity a month ago and had a great time pretending to be pioneers. They went on a long "trek" from the park over to the church building, played some pioneer games, learned about some of the trials the pioneers went through, and even made butter! At the end of the activity all the kids got a packet with some snacks to use to make a "pioneer wagon". Logan's was the only one to make it home before it got eaten. He followed all the directions and got it done really quick. It turned out perfect!!
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The first day of school!!

On Tuesday Aug. 19th the boys started back to school. They were sooooo excited! Logan began 3rd grade in Mrs. Baker's class. So far he's enjoying being a big 3rd grader. He'll be starting piano lessons soon from our neighbor, we're excited for him.

Mason is now a big 1st grader! He gets to go to school all day with Logan and eat lunch in the cafeteria with all the big kids. He's been so excited to have recess with Logan but this year the 3rd and 1st graders don't have recess together, DARN! He is in Mrs. Cern's class with some of his friends from the ward. He's beginning soccer this week and his Sunday school teacher will be his coach!! We had to pull a lot of strings to get him on that team. He'll be with all the other boys his age in the ward. We're soooo excited for him!

Noah starts preschool again with Ms. Danai on Monday. Most of the kids from his class last year are there again, with just a few new ones. He's so much more comfortable this year. Last year he had a hard time leaving me for the first few months of school. Now he's dying to go back. We're looking forward to a fun year for him this year!

Roman isn't starting anything this fall. But he will get to enjoy some one on one time with Mom while his brothers are at school. Hopefully this will help ease the pain of getting kicked off his throne when the baby comes in December. We'll get him involved in something in the spring to help him too. He's actually doing pretty good potty training lately. I just hope he doesn't regress when the baby comes....

Noah's new glasses!

We're on the road to trying to get Noah's eyes "fixed". He has bad vision so he now needs glasses. He also has an over-corrected strabismis. His eyes used to be crossed and we had a surgery when he turned one to un-cross them. They were fine for a while but then become over-corrected...they were going outward. We will have to have another surgery to correct the over-correction soon. Meanwhile, we just need to get him to keep his darn glasses on!! He got the glasses on Monday and they were broken by Tuesday! Luckily Costco was nice enough to do their best to repair them, but if it happens again, we may just need to buy another pair. I actually don't think his prescription is correct. The prescription is as if he were far-sighted and we are ABSOLUTLEY sure that he is very near-sighted. We'll go back in a few weeks and the Dr. will see him and hopefully change his prescription. Wish us luck!!!

Happy 100th Post to MEEE!! (and my little nudger!)

Wow, I can't believe this is my 100th post!! A great opportunity to dedicate it to my little peanut! These are the most recent pictures from my ultrasound a couple weeks ago. I've been waiting to do my next post, my 100th, and saving it for a special occasion! I'd already posted that we found out that our 5th child will be, of course, another boy. But I've yet to post pictures of him. We've been lucky to get some really great profile shots of him. I'm now 21 weeks along, that's OVER half way, yahoo! He's just starting to kick me a bit. They are really just gentle nudges, love taps.... no rib breaking here! (BD reference)

I'm thinking since we're pretty exhausted on boys names, I may post a poll to get peoples vote on which of our faves they like. After naming 4 boys, we're at a loss. We've got a couple ideas, but no clear winners. We're just really hoping for a healthy baby. Noah thinks we need to name him after the characters from Scooby Doo: Freddie, Shaggy, Scooby, Velma!! I explained to him that Velma was a girls name, but that didn't seem to bother him. Then he settled on baby "Pikachu". Not bad, especially if he can perform electric attacks like his Pokemon namesake. Only 19 weeks to go!!

Twilight Confessions...

I've just updated my Twilight Confessions blog regarding the Breaking Dawn Release Party at Border's in Roseville (Douglas/Rocky Ridge) on Aug. 1st. Add your name to the comments if you are planning on joining us at the party!!
**I'VE ALSO JUST ADDED THE NEW TWILIGHT TRAILER TO MY BLOG TOO!!***

The Ballards Rad 80's Party!

This was seriously one of the funnest parties! Just seeing everyone dressed in their best 80's clothes was fun. The Ballards are moving this week to LA for Annie to go to film school at USC. They wanted to go out with a RAD bang! I'm so sad they're moving, they are soooo fun to hang with. They went all out for the party: hiring a couple hot bartenders, and a DJ to keep the 80's tracks rolling.

Dave and I had to go to the Goodwill to get some 80's inspiration. Dave ended up with a Marty McFly style "life preserver" vest, so he went as the 80's Back to the Future star. I just did my best to hide the prego belly under a huge (3XL) cut up sweatshirt, off the shoulder of course. Add some nasty leggings and fingerless gloves, an obnoxious hairbow, too much makeup and I'm an 80's rock star wannabe! The party had a few hairband members (Matt & Corey), some preppys (Mark & Ben), one hot Olivia Newton-John (Rachel), a few bodacious Prom Queens (Tiffani, Amy, & Emily), a Valley girl crew (Tiffany, me, Annie, Keri, Stephanie, Mrs. Macy...)... and more! All the 80's reminiscing made me want to rent all the old John Hughes movies I grew up on: Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful, Better off Dead.... I think I'll have to have an 80's movie night....! Wanna come?

"Thy will be done...."

So, this has been an interesting and confusing last couple of days. For those of you who don't already know... I'm pregnant. We're expecting our fifth child in the middle of December. I'm now 17 weeks along and finally getting over some of the crappy phase. Many of our friends have taken this DNA gender detection test to find out the gender of the baby as early as 8 weeks into your pregnancy. It's a little pricey but nice if you're not too patient and like planning far in advance. It's supposedly "more accurate than an ultrasound" so people say. My mom got pretty excited about wanting to know the gender early to she convinced us to do it. With her help we completed to test kit and sent in my blood sample, paid an extra $27. to over-night it by Fed-ex. That was a Wednesday somewhere around my 10th week I think. I called and bugged the staff at the lab about when I would get my results, I wanted to find out the Friday before Memorial Day so I wouldn't have to wait until Tuesday. I waited on pins and needles all day and around 2pm I got a call from the lab that I could check my results online. I nervously punched in my secret codes and VOILA! My results were there!

"Congratulations! You are likely to be expecting a baby girl. Your Baby Gender Mentor Test result is female, which means that only female fetal genetic materials were present in your blood at the time that you took the Test. This means that you are likely carrying one or more baby girls. "

Okay! After giving birth to 4 wonderful boys, this was a bit of a shock, but none the less exciting! I began to cry a bit ... out of shock, gratitude, happiness, and more shock! I called Dave and tearfully told him the result, needless to say he was slightly shocked as well. (He's so manly he didn't think he could produce a girl!) I proceeded to call a few friends who were also waiting to hear my results.

Since then, I've not really let myself get too wrapped up in the "girl" thing. I honestly just couldn't believe it was possible. Everyone, especially those who had previously taken the test and received correct results, couldn't believe I wasn't completely sure of my results. I thought, perhaps it's just because it's in my nature to prepare myself for the worst. It just never felt safe giving into the idea that I was actually carrying a baby girl. I bought a couple cute pink things and began searching for girl names, but not much else. I decided I would feel more secure once I had an ultrasound and saw for myself that the baby was indeed a girl.

I scheduled a social ultrasound for this last Saturday the 12th. I thought it would be fun to bring all the kids and have my mom be there to see it. Really, I just wanted to validate my previous test results so I could give myself permission to enjoy the idea of expecting a girl. So I lay down on the table ready to hear whether we wasted $250 on a DNA test or whether it was right. It was a bit loud in the room with all the boys laughing at how the baby looked like a skeleton or a peanut. The technician quietly said, "It looks to me like it's a boy.." He asked me to roll over to see if he could get a different view. He proceeded to point out 3-4 times that it looked like it was indeed a boy.

I knew it. I really knew it. Maybe the Spirit had been preparing me all along not to get too excited about it being a girl because it wasn't one. No crying on my part, or Dave's for that matter (he's half robot). Mason got a bit teary eyed, he wanted a baby sister so bad. I tried to joke with him that he really wouldn't want a baby sister with a "wee-wee", that made him laugh and kind of get over it.

I've since had a hard time not thinking about it. I keep telling everyone that I'm fine. I can smile and laugh at the irony of it all. No one that I know that has taken the DNA test has ever received the wrong results. How ironic that a mother of 4 boys would be falsly told she was having a girl on her last pregnancy. I've just been reminding myself that Heavenly Father has a plan for me and he has great reason for giving me the children he has. There is a reason I'm meant to be a mother of all boys. Only he knows that reason. I feel so blessed that I have been able to bear healthy babies at all, a task which some never have to chance to do. I am so grateful for all that I've been blessed with and put my faith in the Lord that I know he has a plan for me and my family. Sometimes it takes experiences like this to remind me that those inconsequential things don't really matter, which gender your children are. What matters is that they are healthy and happy.

So the moral? Don't waste your money on dumb early gender determination tests/scans, just prepare for a healthy baby and enjoy the blessings.....

My little boy was baptized!

Wow! I can't believe my first baby boy is 8 yrs. old and was baptized! I've been so busy that I haven't updated the blog for a while. But this was too important to not blog about. I was able to take Logan out before his baptism and do a little photo shoot. He was such a great sport. I was fast and he's so handsome it wasn't hard. He's growing up so fast I just can't believe it.

He had a wonderful day on Saturday June 21st. We had a small gathering of friends and family who came and supported Logan at his baptism. He just smiled and felt so happy that day. I was so touched to see how pleased he was to be baptized.


My future Missionary!

Logan's Mother's Day Tea

Logan's whole 2nd grade invited all the moms to a Mother's day Tea. The kids performed a bunch of dances that they'd been learning for weeks. Logan kept telling me how much he hated it. He's not the dancing type I guess. Plus, I think having to dance with a girl bugged him a bit. It was sweet to see all the kids and their dances. Logan was visibly miserable through out the entire thing, so I felt bad for him, but I tried to enjoy it anyway.
Here, Logan was supposed to be doing the Macarena, but I think he was a little confused...

This is Logan and his partner Leah. She was so patient with Logan, leading him around. They were really cute together.

I think their couples dance was the Minuet.
The boy standing next to Logan clearly enjoyed the dancing and was really good at it. Logan just kept watching him to see what he was supposed to be doing.
Despite his misery and embarrassment, He looked so handsome! I love my Logan!

Noah's preschool Bike day...

I'm a little behind here on my blogging but I'm gonna try to make up for it with a few posts. Noah had a fun "Bike day" at his preschool a few weeks ago. For the last hour of school all the kids came out front with their bikes and helmets and rode around the chalk paths that a few of the moms had drawn for them. It was so cute to see all these four year olds on their little bikes.
Noah has a cute retro looking tricycle that he kind of knows how to ride. He had fun with the other kids, they all kept bumping into each other. A few kids bumped into me while I was taking pictures, OUCH! Noah is such a sweet heart, I couldn't help but smile with pride while watching him try so hard to ride around.
He is such a happy kid!

Twilight Trailer!

Things are moving along in the world of Twilight! This is the official movie poster that was released yesturday and the teaser trailer was also released. It is 60 seconds of dazzlement! I am so excited for the movie, December 12th just can't come soon enough! I've posted the trailer on my Twilight blog, so check it out! http://twilightconfessions.blogspot.com

My much needed Vacation!!

Wendi and I have been best friends since we were 14 yrs. old. We have been though a lot together and always been there for each other.

We decided we needed a break from life for a couple days and why not do it together!

This is where we went...

This is where we stayed... (FIVE STAR, WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!)

We ate here....

and we ate here....

and we both spent a lot of money here....

Some beautiful places we saw along the way....

It was actually snowing the day I got there (the 24th) .....

and continued to be cold until the day I left (27th).

We also ate here twice, the Red Rock Cafe....

I'd never been through the Salt Lake Temple so we went through just hours after I got off the plane....

We had so much fun, from start to finish! Wendi, like I do, appreciates great food so needless to say we ate alot! We also stayed up very late watching chick-flicks and reminiscing about old times. We plan to get together like this once a year now, but we'll see if life permits us.