McKinley's Blessing

On Father's Day we had McKinley Madison blessed at church and we were lucky to have almost all of our family there. McKinley had on a gorgeous dress my mother got her, almost as gorgeous as McKinley herself...but not quite :)!

Getting a picture of our little family (although not as little anymore) proved pretty tricky, but we ateast have something for posterity.

Here are a few pics of the little lady on her big day with some family...

with Gramma Suzie

with Grandma Lincoln (after Kinners got changed)

with almost all of the Lincoln side of the fam from Utah and Oregon

with some of the Butler side of the family from Arizona

with handsome big brother Tyler

with adoring sister Lexi

with Colton who can't help but steal kisses constantly



We had a lot of fun with everyone here. Although it was near impossible to go and do a lot with so many people, we enjoyed our time just hanging out.

You could find Jedi s fighting (Tyler and his Cuz Jonah, with matching jammies - by coincidence)

You could always find all the little kids climbing all over my dad - he was like the pied piper with kids! They barely ever let him sit down, they'd always come within a couple minutes and start pulling him outside again, saying "C'mon, you're our playground!"

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of great pictures of our "idle time", but there was a lot of eating, lounging and playing outside or downstairs where it was cooler, playing Wii or other games on iPads (new toys a couple people had), watching movies, playing dress-up and other games etc.

It has kind of become a tradition when our family gathers for one of children's blessings, that we have a big picnic at the park the day before and order a 6 ft. sub (man, those things can go a long way) and the kids all play etc. We've played disc-golf or flown kites and this time Nate launched some rockets. Luckily, the weather has cooperated everytime (but I can't say as much for the day of the blessing - hence the crazy blizzard in April for Tyler's blessing when church was actually cancelled!)

A few days before the blessing, my brother Aaron's family came and we were able to do a few fun things before everyone showed up. We went to the zoo with them and had a great time. Again, we weren't able to get very good pictures our our lil' trip, but here's a few...

The kids got to go on the sky ride for the first time.

Colton saw a gorilla for the first time. There was a big silverback sitting, crammed in a corner with a fierce look on his face, and Tyler said "That gorilla's giving himself a timeout!"

These alligators seem to have a smile that says "You look like a tasty treat!"

Lovin' the giraffes.

The whole week was wonderful! We sure love when family comes to visit! (hint, hint)

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