Let it snow Let is snow Let is snow....please

Well it's been forever since I've been on here. Leland's working and Kalli is sleeping so I figured this might be my bestest chance. Winter has hit here, but not so much the snow yet and we would love it to come and warm things up! Last weekend I think it was we went out and found us a Christmas tree. Haley and Nick, Abbie and Brock, and us went out on search for a new tree around Spencer. We'd never been out that way looking and had heard good things. Well let's just say there wasn't a ton, we found one and it might be kind of Charlie Brownish, but we cut it down together and it was a fun time. Kalli even got to go a long. She started out on my back, but Leland thought I was being too slow and going to fall down the mountain with her. So the manly man had to take over :) She did good. It was cold cold cold and we had her all bundled up, by the time we were done deciding which tree (yes it did take awhile) we were all ready to get back to the truck and get warmed up.

Let's see where to get started. Leland got promoted in his job and now has his own car with flashing lights. He got moved up to patrol and is just getting off his training and is now officially really and truly out on his own. He's really liking it and I keep reminding him that he has to be nice and not give tickets....so far so good, just a lot of warnings. :)

We headed down to SLC in October for Kalli to have a check up with her surgeon. She hadn't been eating spoon fed foods very good at all and our pediatrician recommended to go and have the surgeon see what he thought. Well wouldn't you know, literally like a day after I made the appointment she started going to town and eating great. And by the time the day for the appointment came along she was cruising along. So we just had a nice visit and got a picture of Kalli with Dr. Scaife.

Yeah!

I guess most of our updates have to do with Kalli. She's growing and getting big. Crawling all over the place and getting into things. She says dadadada all the time, and sometimes I like to think she says mama, but I think mostly that's just noises that sound kind of like it. She started crawling probably about a month ago now and her latest news is she's finally getting her two bottom teeth in. We haven't been in any big hurry for that...I've heard the later they come in the better so one can only hope.

We had a fun little Halloween. Leland had to work so I just took Kalli to a few places and let everyone see her cute flower costume. She was a cutie!

Rita had some puppies. Leland stayed up with her all night while she was laboring and finally at around 3 am they all showed up. Amazing how fast they grow. We still have 2 left that we are trying to sell. The 2 left are actually our favorites and if it wasn't the dead of winter, I'm pretty sure Leland would have to keep one of them. We were hoping for some extra Christmas money, but guess a bunch will have to go into getting the Alero worked on. Oh well you can always plan on something coming up when you think you might have a little extra. Here she is right before. She let's Kalli crawl all over her. She's been outside most recently and it's been kind of different not having her in here to entertain Kalli. Hopefully we'll get the last two sold soon and she can come back in.

They are pretty cute. We call one of them Frank the Tank and he's probably our favorite, even though we thought for sure a brindle one or the one with all the white on it's face would be. He's just got a great personality.

Guess I should get some sleep and hopefully I can be a little better keeping this updated :)

Summer adventures

Well it's been a long time since I've updated. We were finally able to finish our pasture after working on it what seemed like nonstop before our trip to Colorado. We ended up letting the horses out on it a couple days before we left. Leland wanted to just stay out and sit on the swing and watch the horses nibble on the pasture. Pretty excited to get them out on pasture.

First we had to go get some logs and poles up in Island park. Rita and Kalli were great up there. Kalli just has a million things to look at so we put her on our backs.....well I guess mostly it was me, because Leland was doing most of the hard work. But we got all of our logs and ended up getting home in time to play softball that evening. Here's Kalli looking at Rita when we sat down to eat something and take a breather.

We headed to Colorado to see Leland's family and go the the Manassa Pioneer Days celebration. It turned out to be a fun trip. We spent a few days hanging out with Leland's family before the celebration started. We went to the Great Sand Dunes and played in the sand for a little while. Trinette and Leland's kids built a big river in the sand.

We got to go to Leland's dad's cabin and roasted hotdogs and marshmallows and had a great time in the outdoors. What a neat place for a cabin with a creek running through close. So pretty! We also got to go swimming. It was a warm swimming pool and we all had a great time. Kalli loved it. Learned to splash and really enjoyed being in the water.

They go all out there for Pioneer days. From what I gather, Manassa was settled by Mormons way back when and there's still a large percentage of LDS people there. During their celebration it goes from a small town of what I guess would be close to the size of Menan to a town filled with around 10,000 people (at least that's what I thought I heard). They have a parade both days that's probably the best parade I've ever seen. Lots of floats, plus the regular fire trucks, tractors, old cars, and horses.

Leland's Aunt Debby's float. Wow it was the coolest! The horses went around and they had music and everything playing. It was spectacular. I can't imagine the work that went into it.

Leland's dad's float. It was very cool! Lady Liberty made through the whole two days with her arm. Cassandra was pretty worried it was going to fall off the last go through.

Then this turtle float is just one of the other ones. It was a great parade!

They also have a carnival set up with some rides, a 5K run, demolition derby, Motocross, fireworks, and probably more. Kalli got to ride the carousel with her daddy :)

We were pretty worn out by the time we were heading home. We ended up driving a new vehicle home (well new to us) that Leland's family found for us and helped us get. Wow they are awesome and we love it! Made the drive home much nicer. We ended up making the trip in a couple days to save our sanity and maybe Kalli's too. She did great for the trip, but she was ready to be out of the car seat for a few days after we got home.

Once we got home we have been trying to catch up on things. We finally got Kalli's room painted and as of today we have carpet. Yeah! Now we can get all of her stuff moved into one room. And hopefully get her moved into her room, if I can survive moving her away from the bedside. I might be a little comfortable with her right there to look at her and check on her when I wake up. The past week we've been trying to help get the horses ready for the fair. So we've been out driving quite a bit. Which has been nice. Leland gets to have the whole fair off so he's super excited. I think we'll end up being down there most the week.

Leland just celebrated his 39th birthday! He ended up having to work, but we had cake and ice cream and he got to blow out candles and make a wish. Any ideas what his wish was?

We're starting Kalli on baby food. We have actually been doing it for awhile, but haven't been really faithful with it. I never had any idea how much work it is to feed them, the bottle is so much easier. So with our trip to Colorado we haven't been as diligent as we'd like to be.

And well that's just a cute picture of Kalli. She's growing and doing great! She's pretty fun. She's been loving out being with the horses. We use the backpack that Trinette gave us and we're just out and about with the horses and driving. She talks to them and likes to try and grab them. She's sitting up pretty well by herself. Just a bit unsteady still, but is pretty much like a normal baby now. Such a cutie!

Our newest addition

This is a little late in coming, but I was kind of trying to wait for a nice sunny day to get some cute pictures. Well rain rain go away! We need to get the pasture dried out and cut to so we can get some horses out on it. Our newest addition arrived somewhere between midnight and 2 am on June 9th. Leland was working days so I was given the job of checking on Roxie every couple of hours, to make sure all was well with her baby. At midnight I went out and she was pacing and I thought, pretty good chance it will be tonight. Course I've thought that many times when I've checked on mares all night and a week later they still haven't had it :) So then I woke up around 2 am and went to check on her and lo and behold there was a little one stumbling around looking for some chi chi pie as Leland calls it. I ran in to tell Leland who's been so excited for the colt to come that he could hardly stand it. After running out in his underwear to find yes indeed I wasn't crying wolf this time. He decided to go get dressed and we spent awhile out there, making sure it was sucking and dried off enough and just looking at HIM in awe. Yes he is a HIM and he's palamino too. We got what we wanted !! Yeah! We've been out playing with him and he loves to be scratched and so far is very friendly.

And he's doing great even with all this lovely rainy weather we are having. Running and bucking around the corral.

Rita and Tucker making friends....

Camping and such.....

Here's a picture today of Kalli sleeping. Lately it's either been sleeping like a cute little baby or needing to be entertained. There's no more cute cuddling anymore.....it's let me see what's going on. And don't just sit there let's go go go. She was loving being outside, when the weather was nice, but lately it hasn't been so nice out.

She was styling some new sunglasses while she was out shopping with Daddy.

And no longer is the bumbo chair safe!

We went camping a couple weekends ago. It was one of those, do it now or we will never get another day to be able to go with Leland and I's work schedule. Needless to say the weather wasn't spectacular. We were able to get dinner made before it started raining and Nick and Haley joined us for tinfoil dinners and smores. Then when we finally decided we better get out of the drizzly rain we had my parents camper trailer. So it all actually went pretty well and we stayed relatively dry. Just a little more dirty than we'd love to have it. The rain put us to sleep and the next morning it was drizzling on and off. We almost had breakfast finished before it started again.

Kalli stayed warm and cozy!

On the way home from camping we stopped at Heisi and Kalli had her first swim. It was still kind of drizzly but the warm pool was pretty nice. Kalli liked it okish. She's still not in the stage of splashing and playing in the water in her baths. She likes them and talks and smiles, but hasn't gotten into the splashing and laughing at it yet. So it was kind of just a glorified bath experience for her. She liked watching the people and didn't love getting splashed, hopefully next time it will be a little warmer weather and be an even better swim. Sorry we didn't get any good pictures of it.

No buckin bronc....yet :)

Well Leland did it! He's been on Torque a couple of times now. Woo Hoo! Seems to be doing good. He says he'll be on him riding out and about before too long. Makes it hard if it's just him and Kalli at home and she's watching from the stroller. Sometimes she's not entirely entertained by it.

Yes we have already had a discussion on this shirt. Go Nascar! He said it was a good one to get out and get dirty.

Kalli's blessing and more....

This is late, but I feel like I'm still catching up. Kalli was blessed on April 12th. We had to try and fit it in between Leland being gone to POST training in Boise and me going back to work. Turns out it was about the only sunday we could do it and it was kind of a special day too. This year that was Easter and it was also our 1 year anniversary! So pretty cool!

Kalli's Grandma Barney made her blessing dress and did all the embroidery on it. She used the same pattern that was used to make her own blessing dress. So we all think it's pretty extra special!

It was a great day, except that Leland had to leave right after dinner to head back to Boise. We're so glad he's home!! and he passed!!

We all knew he could do it but he was pretty nervous for awhile there. Now the question is will he go back sometime for 13 more weeks if they ask him?

Kalli's Grandma and Grandpa Smith were excited to see her. They came with his sister Trinette and her family about a week after we got home from the hospital. It was good to have them all come.

We ended up having a shower after she got home since she surprised us a little early. This is the cute diaper cake Abbie and Haley made for her. She got some really cute stuff!

Let's see if we can get this started.....

Well it's now been at least over a month since I've been meaning to get this started. I swear I don't know where the time goes anymore. Kalli keeps us running most the time. Between her, work and nice weather keeping us outside whenever we can.....I struggle to get the extras done. Kalli is just over 4 months old now and we've been home from the hospital just over 2 months. She's really doing great, still eating good and growing really well. At her 4 mo. doctor's appointment she weighed 10 lb. 4 oz. So we are climbing the curve, but still show that she's below the percentiles. The doctor said it would take her probably 18 months to 2 years to catch up. But she's climbing and that's what we are looking for. She seems to be doing all the things that a normal 4 month old baby should be doing. So we are very happy about that. She smiles and coos and goos and tells us lots of stories. No really good giggles yet, but almost. She's starting to like her toys and always wants to be seen. She's just got to where if you leave the room she knows and she wants to see someone or be with someone or else she'll let you know.

A quick little run of events since Kalli decided to surprise us and come 6 weeks early. My water broke on Jan. 3, out of the blue. We just finished tomato soup and grilled cheese and I was trying to work on the bulletin board for primary.....next thing we know Leland is wading through my water in the kitchen trying to find shoes and get me out in the car. I was a little distraught to say the least. Kalli decided to be welcomed here at 5:44 pm the next day, Jan. 4. 20 hours of labor, but since I didn't even start really feeling the contractions until about 3 the next morning it really wasn't as bad as it might sound. And anyone who wants can call me a wimp, but my epidural worked fabulous and I would totally recommend it!

She did great! We were a little distraught about having to keep her in the NICU in Idaho Falls for awhile, but little did we know we had an even bigger adventure coming. The neonatologist came to our hospital room just after we turned out the lights and thought we might get a little sleep. Kalli was born with a tracheoesophageal fistula....meaning her stomach and her esophagus didn't meet together. The esophagus ended in a little pouch and up from the stomach the tube was connected to her lung. Leland flew with her the next morning on a life flight plane from SLC to Primary Children's medical Center. With all of the tests they were doing that day they also found out that she had a perforated bowel. So she went to surgery that night and ended up with a little stoma for her ostomy. They decided she needed a few days recovery, and waited until Friday to do her fistula repair. It ended up being fixable. Yeah! It was a snug repair, but they were able to sew it together and 5 days later she passed her esophagram with no leaks at the repair site. Kalli turned out to be a great eater. The only problem was she kept dropping her heart rate when she ate and sometimes even when she wasn't eating. That kept us in the hospital longer than expected and we ended up still being there when it was time to do the take down of her ostomy. She had kind of a rough recovery from that surgery, but once she turned the right way and started eating her goal feeds soon after getting her ventilator tube out. It seemed an answer to lots of prayers because once she started eating again her heart rate stopped dropping as dramatically and after our 7 day count down of no bradycardias and then a few more to show that she was gaining weight good we were on our way home, March 6th.

I suppose that's not the shortest version of Kalli's beginnings, but relatively it's a shorter one. Now we're home and she doesn't have to have her milk thickened anymore. She's small but almost a regular healthy baby. At four months she's almost outgrowing her newborn clothes. She gets to be with me for 4 days and then with her daddy for 4 days.....but I'm pretty close to declaring we're going to eat rice and beans every night if that's what it takes for me to go part-time.

Well we just finished her first rice cereal and I'm hoping bed time is coming soon. Hopefully I'll keep this updated at least semi regularly once i get it all figured out. :)