The Truth about our Summer

Yay! We are home from our epic 17 day vacation. We had a grand time but I do not recommend coming home the day before school starts. It's been a bumpy start to the school year. I have been busy with laundry, getting groceries, unpacking and making sure my kiddos get adjusted to our new schedule. I have A LOT to blog about though and I'm going to go in chronological order.

At the beginning of the summer I was so jazzed about having a fun and productive summer with my kiddos. We were planned and scheduled and things went smoothly for the first couple of weeks. But then.... we got this:

And everything besides SURVIVING this summer went right out the window!! Surprised? Yeah, I'm still feeling a little shell shocked about the whole thing, even though this is a planned pregnancy. I spent the majority of July feeling like I wanted to die and my poor kids took the brunt of it. I tried hard to keep some semblance of normalcy around here but I'm pretty sure I failed miserably! Luckily, my "morning sickness" usually hit around 3 p.m. so I was able to keep it together until then and Allen was able to take over when he got home. In short, we ate out way too much, my kids watched way too much TV and my house was messy for the better part of a month! Allen also got a BIG promotion at work this summer so he has been working an insane number of hours adjusting to his new job making that first trimester rough on everyone.

The good news is that at 15 weeks most of the MS seems to have passed, though I still have my moments most days. This pregnancy feels pretty similar to my pregnancy with Carter - extreme nausea unless I am eating, plus being starving most of the time. It's been a weird combination - nausea + hunger. I've managed to pack on a few (haha) pounds already. It seems that no matter how hard I try or how much I swear "this time will be different" I still gain lots of weight. You'd think by my 4th pregnancy I would just accept that's how my body does things.

Most people know I was pretty adamantly against having a 4th baby so I will just address it right now. Allen felt very strongly that there was another baby out there for us. I felt pretty content with 3. I was so sure that we were done that I worked my tail off last fall and lost the rest of my baby weight and felt awesome. But his nagging feeling wouldn't go away. I prayed and prayed and prayed about it a lot and didn't ever really feel a definitive answer either way. So without going into a lot of details I will just say that I could have sat on the fence for the rest of my life and am pretty much going on faith with this one. I am HAPPY that the decision is made and that I'll never, ever have to think about it again.

To say that the kids are thrilled to pieces would be an enormous understatement. We told them pretty early on because I just felt so lousy and I felt like they needed to understand why. Carter and Makenna have been praying for another baby for a long time and just couldn't understand why their prayers were not being answered. The first thing out of Makenna's mouth when we told them was, "oh mom, Heavenly Father FINALLY answered our prayers." It was the cutest thing ever. She is forever kissing my tummy and they have been great helpers. Addie has no clue what is going on even though we talk about the baby all the time. Carter is 100% convinced that he is getting a brother this time around and prays about it every single day. I guess we will know in a few weeks!

Anyway, that is the truth about how our summer really went around here. I try not to think too much about having a nursing newborn next summer too but I'm sure this baby will be a huge

blessing to our family. I did already post my pregnancy news of Facebook so most of my friends already know our news but I wanted a record of this pregnancy too!