Announcing the arrival of...

our little girl! Charity Rose was born the day before my scheduled c-section. She didn't want to wait any longer I guess. Tuesday morning I woke up with contractions at 1:00 am or so. I couldn't go back to sleep because they just kept getting stronger, but not regular enough to go to the hospital. They varied from 5-25 minutes apart. When daylight finally arrived I got up sent the kids to school, Bob to work and took a warm bath to hopefully settle things down. It helped and the contractions stopped during the morning. By that afternoon they were starting up again but very random. We ordered pizza for dinner because I wasn't up to anything else and then we headed out to Nathan's Joy School graduation that evening. It was really cute and he had a great time.

When we got home I climbed into another hot bath to see if that would help anything and then went to bed. As soon as I laid down though the contractions really started to build intensity and were more frequent but still not as close together as the doctor had suggested before I headed off to the hospital. But the longer I laid there, the more they hurt and then the baby started it's evening gymnastics which pushed me over the edge. I couldn't take another night of this! I went downstairs and cried on Bob for a while and then called the hospital about 11:30. They said for me to come in and get things checked out. We called Bob's sister to come and stay with the kids and got to the hospital about 12:15 am Wednesday morning. Can I just say that security in the hospital has stepped up a lot since I was there last?! Bob started filling out forms while I waited for someone from Labor and Delivery to come and get me and escort me upstairs.

After they monitored me for a while and my doctor, who just happened to be at the hospital for another delivery finished up, they prepped me for a c-section and rolled me into the OR. Charity Rose arrived at 4:04 am on Wednesday May 25th. She weighed 6 pounds 15 ounces and was 19.5 inches long and beautiful in every way! She had a very healthy set of lungs which she started using as soon as they pulled her out and didn't stop crying until they got her into the nursery and bundled up.

I love pictures of Bob's big hand on the little tiny babies. I always forget how truly tiny newborns are.

Maddie and Jeni couldn't wait to come and see their newest little sister as soon as they got home from school.

Grace didn't even notice the baby at first until someone passed her back to me. She has been fascinated with "Daridy" ever since then. She is the best little helper and wants to be around the baby all the time. Her favorite thing is to help me with Charity's binky by going and getting it for me. Then she drops it a few times, sucks on it a few times herself, plays with it and then finally goes and washes it in the bathtub for me. Sometimes it takes a while to get a binky clean enough to actually give to Charity!!

It's finally time to go home!

Nathan on the other hand really didn't want much to do with the baby at first. It took him a few days to warm up to her enough to want to hold her. But now that he has you can see that he loves her a lot!

Welcome to our family Charity Rose!!

Nathan's last Joy School Graduation

Nathan graduated from Joy School last Tuesday night. This is his third and final graduation as he will go to full time Kindergarten next year. He has enjoyed his Joy School experience very much and so have I. It's a great program that I have really come to love! I love that it is so focused on values and experiences rather than academics. I feel like those will come soon enough! Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from his graduation.
He had four other kids in his class: Luke, Nina, Lydia and Camille. It was fun to get to know some new friends this year.
Nathan will go to Kindergarten this year and Grace is a little young for Joy School so I will take a year off and then we'll do it all again!

Girls night/day out and a surprise!

Bob and Nathan went on a father/son stake camp out a couple of weekends ago so me and the girls decided we wanted to have some girl fun together too. We had a nice dinner at home followed by a special dessert of apple slices, peanut butter, sugar and carmel that Jeni created for us. Then we watched a chick flick that Maddie picked! I was pretty tired after that so we all piled into my room for a sleepover. I woke up during the night with some contractions and debated if I needed to call Bob and have him come home early. But they eventually quit so I went back to sleep and Bob and Nathan finished their camp out!

The next morning I woke up tired and sore but the contractions were gone. After I had a warm bath we dropped Gracie off with my parents and headed out to get a pedicure! The girls were so excited! We ended up in a cute little spa that had a couple of pedicure chairs for kids. Jeni had a big teddy bear and Maddie had the princess chair. The girls got flowers and diamonds on their toes but the girl who was doing my pedicure had something else in mind for my toes. She painted on the cutest little baby feet and polka dots. They are darling! What is it about a pedicure that makes you feel so good? And pretty? Especially when I can't even reach my own toes anymore!

Later that afternoon I was suppose to go to a baby shower for one of the sisters in my ward. My friend Maegan came and picked me up and away we went. As soon as we got there she turned to me and told me that this shower was not only for Catherine but it was a surprise shower for me too!! It was a total surprise! I mean first of all, who expects a shower for baby number five and then, even though they passed out the "surprise" invitations in Relief Society right in front of me (they gave me a special one they printed just for me) no one said anything to me! Not even Bob, who isn't always the best secret keeper when it comes to fun stuff like this and Maddie and Jeni. It was such a wonderful surprise! It was fun to sit and visit, eat and open presents! My baby will have some new things to wear now and not just stained, used three or four times already stuff! It was a great afternoon and it meant so much to me that they would care enough to do this for me and my baby.

Thank you so much to everyone involved! It was wonderful!