Other April / May Happenings

My friend Sarah took some pictures of McKinley when she was about 3 weeks old. Although McKinley didn't cooperate very much, Sarah was able to get some really cute ones. Thanks Sarah!

We love this one of Kinners (the most recent nickname we're trying out) because it seems like you can just stare forever into her eyes and never really grasp what she's thinking.

For Easter we got together with some good friends and had a little egg hunt. We thought we'd give the youngest two a head start before the bigger kids, but there was no need. Colton and their little girl ended up finding way more than their share (including the hardest ones).

We took this exact same picture of Lexi in this lil' ladybug outfit and I gotta say it's almost impossible to tell the difference between the two.

Utter relaxation!

One tired momma cuddling her sweetie girl.

The whole fam sure loves to get a turn snuggling with McKinley

I discovered I don't have any matching clothes for the boys and I made it my quest to begin to solve that problem at the clearance rack at Target

One of the many sweet moments we wish we could bottle up

Turning one month old and happy about it :)

Tyler's preschool class put on a little production for Mother's Day and I thought these face cutout were HILARIOUS!

Lexi had a dance recital in May. Here she is with one of her best friends. It's so fun they've been able to dance and take swim lessons together over the years.

They performed a ballet number
and

a hip-hop tap number.....so cute!

Here's McKinley in one of my favorite dresses before her first time to church

As always, there are many more photos of April and May, if you're interested, on our picasaweb link (upper right of page)

Colton turns 2

Let me just talk for a minute about our cute lil' (well, not so little- he's a bit of a beast) Colton. He's now a big brother and LOVING it! I was a little worried how he'd do with the baby, but he literally squeals and giggles in glee whenver he sees her and yells "BWEEE" (his word for baby/McKinley I guess). He is constantly trying to cover her all over with kisses. When he doesn't see her he's asking where she is. It really is so sweet! I think he's going to do well at protecting her, but for now we kinda have to protect her FROM him and all his "enthusiastic" adoration.

Colton would try to jump in the swing with baby if he could.

The sweetest big brothers lovin' on their baby sister

So now Colton is offically a big two-year old. For his actual birthday we were prety low key. He got his favorite spaghetti dinner and wore his favorite hat of the day (he's really into hats lately).

Patiently awaiting to open all his loot.

I guess you could probably call this birthday the Buzz and Woody birthday - his current obsession! It helps that there's Toy Story stuff everywhere you look in the stores now.

Some of his most favorite presents

He got a sad little pan of brownies for his real birthday, but I tried to make up for it later....

We threw him a little party at the park with some friends and I attempted to make my first fondant cake. Cakes and I have a rocky relationship, but I gave it a go and made this rocket ship with some advice from my friend Callie the cake master. Buzz seemed too daunting, so I thought maybe a rocket ship would be the easy way out. Easy isn't exactly what I'd call it (for me anyway), but it was a good learning experience. I also tried to make the cupcakes look like the little green men from Toy Story. It was fun and Colton seemed to like it all.

He especially enjoyed being sung to by so many people :)

That's McKinley's sweet little head sticking out on my chest, if you couldn't figure it out

Diggin in' and makin' a mess with his friend Laraleigh

Colton loving all the great gifts he recieved (completely unnecessarily) from our generous friends. Thanks everyone!

McKinley Madison arrives

I know it's not exactly breaking news for most of you, considering she was born six weeks ago....but better late than never.

This picture is while McKinley was still snug in my tummy. I definitely got the most comments from people, friends and strangers alike, on the size of my belly this pregnancy. Most people seemed to be convinced that she'd come out over 10 pounds and playing football as one said.

Well....she came out a dainty 8 pounds 12 ounces, surprising everyone (including me & the doctor). Here's McKinley's first picture.

As most of you know, Nate and I didn't know what we were having before hand (although Nate made it known to almost everyone he was POSITIVE it was a girl). It's a good thing he was right or he would have never ever been able to live that down. People were anxious to rub it in his face, but obviously they didn't get the chance.

Here are some happy and very tired parents.

For those of you interested in some of the details of the delivery, read on. For those who'd rather not be bored, feel free to skip ahead :)
Backing up a bit... Nate's parents came out to stay for a week to help with the kids. They got here a couple days before I was due. So when my due date, April 12th, arrived you can imagine I was getting a bit antsy. For the last few weeks before my due date, I was doing just about everything I could think of to "encourage" the baby to come out (including most wives' tales). Because of my previous C-section, the doctor didn't want to induce me, so I was trying to be safely creative. Well, in the wee hours of the morning the day after my due date, McKinley decided to make her debut thanks to some regular contractions the night before and a little help from some castor oil (YUCK!).

It only took less than 2 hours after drinking the nasty mix that I started feeling crazy intense contractions that there was never any break from. I was still hesitant for some reason to go to the hospital even though I could barely talk or move (I'm a little stubborn I guess). Then Nate, being wise, said "Whatever, we're going". Good thing he said that because we literally barely made it to the hospital before it was time to push. It was very similar to my deliver with Alexis.

When we got there, all the nurses rushed to hook me up to an IV because I was supposed to get like 4 rounds of antibiotics because of my group B strep. That obviously wasn't going to happen, but they hoped maybe I could get in one round. Well, because of all the pressure going on in my body, I kept "blowing" wherever they poked me. They ended up having to poke me almost ten times to get "a good one" and they totally gave up on numbing me first. It was kind of humorous (I can say that now). Unfortunately my doctor wasn't able to deliver her, but there was a great in-house OBGYN that did. In fact he's all my friends' doctor.

Nate was, as always, a champ. I kept him busy this time putting ice chips in my mouth every few seconds. It was all so fast and intense, but it went very well and she came out with just a few pushes and was perfect! It was so fun to see she really was a girl as Nate predicted. I really was hoping for a girl, but trying to stay neutral. Her siblings really couldn't be happier either.

Here's our lil' peanut M&M, all 21 1/2 inches of her :)

You can most definitely tell she's related to her siblings. I think she has petite and feminine features too.

Her siblings were anxious to meet her and give her love (Colton was a little TOO anxious).

Here's Grandma Lincoln taking a turn. I love that it looks like McKinley is smiling here.

Here she's singing to her mommy, I can tell she's got a future there :)

She wasn't too happy to have her first car-seat experience.

A couple weeks later, we tried to take some pictures of all the kids...

We discovered this is a very tricky feat.

Sibling stair-steps

February celebrations!!

As many of you know in our family we get the privilege of celebrating 3 birthdays in February. This year as I already mentioned, Tyler celebrated his in Disneyland. Here are a couple pictures of the b-day festivities back at the hotel after a VERY long fun-filled day! Nate ran to the grocery store and got this little cake for Tyler and his cousin Danielle who shares his birthday. As you can see all 20 (almost) of us crowded into one room to celebrate.

Here's Tyler opening a few presents with all his cousins admiring. "OOOh, ahhh Spider man backpack!"

A couple weeks later it was Lexi's turn. She asked for a pink butterfly cake. I know it's not much to shout about (especially compared to my amazingly talented friends who get paid for thier cake creations), but Lexi was happy :)

We didn't really do parties this year b/c of the Disneyland trip, but we told Lexi she could go somewhere fun and invite a couple friends. After offering dozens of creative options near and far...wouldn't you know Lexi chose Chuck E. Cheese (what's with that place?!) Anyway, here's Lexi celebrating with a couple school friends at her favorite place.

Tyler and Colton got in on the action too. They always love the BIG TRUCKS (or "ducks" as Colton would say).

Here's Lexi the next day on her actual birthday opening some presents, her favorite of which being a new pet fish (no- it wasn't in one of the bags).

In the midst of the birthday excitement, we had Valentine's Day and Nate got me this ENORMOUS card. He gave it to me when we went out to eat. The other people in the restaurant got a kick out of it I'm sure. Anyway, I thought it was hilarious so I had to take a picture of it.

Then came Nathan's birthday, where he offically got his "Man's TV". Yes, it's very big, but he mounted it on the wall and it's not in the way too much, so I'm getting more used to it.

His special day came complete with a family dance party in the family room and a wrestling match (of which I did not participate in as you can imagine).

His other wish for his b-day was an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins, so that's what he got. It was kinda nice not making one :) Thanks Nate!

February is the shortest month, but is big in celebrations for our family. I'm so grateful for my precious crew, just hate to see another year pass and them all get older.

DISNEYLAND 2010

As many of you know , our family recently took a trip to Disneyland with the extended Lincoln clan. Woohoo!! It was quite a trip, 4 long days in the car, 3 VERY full days at the park...but it was a great time for all. Nothing is quite like seeing Disneyland through the eyes of your children. Again, there's too many fun pictures to post in one blog, so you need to click on the link for our picasaweb album towards the top right corner and then click on the Disneyland album. I apologize in advance for my prolific explanation of our adventure. Read on if you dare.... :)

Our trip was extra neat as we got to celebrate some birthdays while we were there. On our first day at the park, Tyler turned 5!! Funny thing is ... 3 years ago exactly we were there on Tyler's 2nd birthday with my family. Pretty lucky kid, ay? Well, it's a great time of year to go. One of our nieces on the trip shares the same birthday with Tyler and turned 12. You get lots of attention and special treatment there when it's you birthday. There are 3 other February birthdays within our big groupas well, so we all celebrated the first night by eating at Goofy's Kitchen where we got to meet and greet many of our favorite characters (as you see above) and get even more special treatment.

On the first day, we were all wearing red matching shirts (thanks to my sister-in-law), so we drew a little attention to ourselves. Half of our group got separated from each other within the masses as were were wating on Main Street for the park to officially open. Some of the park officals that were going to open the park saw half our group waiting in a shop (in an attempt to short-cut and get infront of the crowd) and invited us to step infront of the mass of people waiting and asked if we wanted to "open" the park. Of course we said yes, although we couldn't get the rest our group up with us. It was very awkward as our little group faced the thousands of people with the "how come they get to be up there?" look on their faces and we just stood there with our hands up in a "stop" fashion. We did that for a few minutes, then some of the officals announced our family and where were we from etc. Then they whispered to us to run as fast as we could when they said go, in order to get out of the way and not get trampled by the crowd. It was an exciting way to start our Disney adventure.

Some of the highlights of our time were watching the parade on the first night and Lexi and Tyler getting lots of attention from the characters in the parade (mostly because of their birthday buttons). At some points they got to go out and dance a few times in the parade and be in a conga line etc. Lexi was totally into it and Tyler (well - he reluctantly followed his sister). The kids also loved the big rides they were able to go on (Tyler too, because he's a little tall for his age) like Indiana Jones, Space Mountain and Splash Mountain etc. An even neater thing happened on the second evening...Nate's brother's family was invited to be in the pre-parade and ride on the lead car because they had done some volunteer work, which is the big theme at the park this year. There ended up being a couple more spots on the car partly because Nate's mom sacrificed her spot, so they invited Tyler, Lexi and my other nephew to ride with them. Nate ran along through the crowd trying to get good video of them the whole way, while Colton and I waited at the end. They got to ride in an old fashioned fire-vehicle and Tyler got to ring the bell. They were all having the time of their life waving at the crowds as they rode by. It made a great memory!!! Thanks Dan, Joylin and Grandma :)

Another awesome experience we had was participating in the Jedi Training Program. We observed this the first day and thought some of the kids would absolutely LOVE to be a part of it. So it was our goal to make it happen the second day, knowing only a small group of kids got picked. We arrived very early for the last show, hoping it would increase our chances to get some of our kiddos picked to be participants. We were told it's totally at random, but that it might help to make a lot of noise and jump up and down....so you can probably imagine the spectacle we made of ourselves. Tyler was picked right away (again because of his BIG birthday button), Lexi got confused and thought they pointed to her because she had a button on as well so she began to walk up too and they let her. Then eventually the Jedi masters picked two of my nieces and my nephew as well. We were all totally jazzed. All the kid participants got to wear the Jedi cloaks and use a light saber. The Jedi masters gave a short training session with some key moves for the padawan (spelling???, Jedi's in training) to use. Then Darth Vader and Darth Mal made quite an entrance trying to persuade all the trainees to join the dark side. They of course all refused, so they all geared up for a battle. Each child got a chance to go one-on-one with one of the villains and use their newly learned moves. It was SOOO much FUN!! There's no shortage of footage with that event, believe me.

The third day we spent in California Adventure and made pretty great time. Again the kids loved all the big rides. Lexi's favorites were the Screamers roller coaster and the Tower of Terror. They all got to go on the wild water ride too and get SOAKED!!! We had a grand time.

Before going on this trip I was not looking forward to the many rides I wouldn't be able to go on and also just being on my feet all day lugging around my big 'ol pregnant body. In fact many family members jokingly asked if they should get a wheelchair for me before hand, and of course I laughed and said I'm not decrepid. Really though, by the end of the first day, the wheel chair option was looking mighty nice! Well, I was pleasantly surprised at the many rides or activities I could do. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. The whole being on my feet a lot and being very pregnant, that wasn't so much fun, but I lived. It was hard on everyone's body I think.

The crazy thing was, after coming back to the hotel the last night at the park, we were all soooo beat. But Nate got up at the crack of dawn the next day and proceeded to go on a 2-day bike tour with his friend through Joshua Tree National Park. I couldn't even imagine being able to do that. Good thing that boy's in shape! He and his friend seemed to have a successful trip though and went through a lot of miles. I'm proud of them, but did not for a second want to be in their shoes.

Overall, it was a wonderful, yet tiring trip. The kids didn't do too bad in the car, considering. I probably had a rougher time than they did :) I'm so glad we were able to make it work and spend that memorable time with the rest of Nate's family.