Happy New Year!

New Years was very low key! Jolie was babysitting for a family in the ward. The rest of us just hung out at home and grabbed pillows and blankets and watched movies and the ball drop!  Jacob was the first to fall asleep. Giselle beat him but mostly because she was watching stuff on my phone. once we took it away she fell right to sleep..literally within minutes.  Jocelyn was there too and she slept most of the time!  Here's to a new year with lots of great things to come!!!

Our new family of EIGHT!

Day 2 is when all the family came into town.  Grandma Sue actually got there the night before but very late.  Grandparents came and held baby Jocelyn or Jocie as the kids like to call her.  Of course the kids all wanted to hold her again as well. So lots of passing the baby happened that day.  These are a few of my favorite shots.  Just look at her cheeks. and her chins!!! Welcome to our family Jocelyn we are SO happy you are here.

 Jocelyn is wrapped in a blanket made by her Great Grandma Jackson!

This is one of the many bows the girls put on her right away. They enjoy playing dress up with her!

Jocelyn Sarah Fox

The day after Christmas I woke up and decided I needed to get Christmas put away as much as possible. So I started on the trees. Since we had 3 this year that wasn't an easy feat.  Brett knew I had been having contractions for what seemed like days so he kept asking me how I was feeling.  We got all 3 trees undecorated and 2 of the trees down and put away. The real one was drug outside.  Well it must have kicked something into gear because I decided to call my doctor's office.  I didn't tell Brett I did until I got off the phone and said, the midwife wants me to come into the office.  I went in thinking I was probably going to be sent home.  She checked me and said…do you think your going to have a baby today? I told her, I think so but I'm not sure. She said well your 5 cm easy and your bag of water is bulging. Why don't you go home and get your stuff together and meet me at the hospital.  OK.  So I drove home and called Brett and told him what she said.  We took our time getting stuff together and then headed to the hospital.  Jolie and Genna had their friends Savannah and McKenzie over so we called their mom to let her know that we just left all the kids at our house without us.  She is wonderful and came over and jumped in. She fed them dinner and waited there until we had the baby.  Thankfully I don't have very long labors and so they didn't have to wait very long.
This labor was very different from my others though.  Since I had a midwife this time she was very much the let's just wait and see what happens approach.  So no pitocin this time.  She tried to get me to do it without the epidural but with what happened with Jacob I didn't want to.  Although now after the fact I do think I could have done it better this time because contractions without the pit are more manageable…not easy but not quite as hard.  I felt the urge to push and the midwife came over and very calmly told me to start pushing. She didn't break down the bed or anything just sat on the side.  She asked Brett to hold a leg and the nurse held the other. It was all very low key.  The pushing took longer this time, I'm convinced because I didn't have the pit to help with that part.  She finally was born and they immediately put her on my chest.  She just laid on me for a while…so long in fact Brett was getting quite anxious to hold her.  Eventually they took her and weighed her.  7lbs 10oz. WOW, we've never had a baby that big.  She was 21 1/2 in. long as well.  Once she was wrapped up we called our friend to bring the kids up to meet the baby.  The staff at the hospital all knew this was my 6th baby so they weren't surprised when a herd of kids came in.  They were all SO excited to meet her and hold her.   Her poor little face was badly bruised. The pushing took a while but when she finally came out she came out FAST, so it bruised her cute little face!    Kelly ( our friend) left the kids with us at the hospital and took her girls home.  Our other friend came up to the hospital to take the kids home and put them to bed.  Brett left a few minutes after her to help, since the baby had to go to the nursery for a little while!  Jocelyn was very sleepy that first night and slept great!

Merry Christmas

Christmas this year was filled with lots of the normal busyness that comes with the season but we also had an added stress of a baby that could come at any time!  Brett was also VERY busy at work and so that always makes things a little more stressful! Christmas Eve we decided to do our big dinner since we didn't know when baby was coming. Christmas Eve came and still no baby.  Thankfully we had most of the wrapping done but still had to work on some last minute "assembly".  That ended up taking WAY longer than we realized.  So Christmas morning we were a little tired to say the least.  The kids were so excited…we told the kids they couldn't wake us before 7am.  We didn't think the oldest would be the one to wake the youngest up this year but yup that's what happened.  It is so fun to see their faces when we come downstairs.  A few favorites this year was a bike for Giselle, iPods for Jolie and Jillian. Camera for Jolie and Genna and bow and arrow for all of them…the big family present from Santa was a ping pong table. It was a great Christmas day. I am bummed I never took pictures of all our decorations. This year we did 3 trees and lights outside. It was quite festive around here.  That night we went to dinner at our friends home The Sorensen's.  It was delicious and fun company. They have 3 boys so Jacob is in heaven being there. Our older girls are too! :)

 This is the tree when you first walk in the front door. We call it the "pretty tree".

 This tree was new this year. It was a "Dr. Seuss theme".  I really had fun finding stuff for this tree. The kids really liked decorating it too.

 Here is our real tree which did get decorated too. This one always gets all the homemade ornaments and yearly ornaments. A very fun FHE tradition.

 I thought it would be fun to "make" Christmas plates this year. I forgot though that I was 9 months pregnant and Brett was of course going to be working late since this is his crazy time of year. Why I thought I could handle it by myself is beyond me…but I did. It was a tad stressful at times and not exactly how I envisioned it. Now I can look at them and say Yay I'm so glad they made these but that night I was just ready to call it quits!

 We went to Hinsdale's annual Christmas walk this year and met up with some friends that live by the train station, the husband actually works with Brett at his firm.  It was FREEZING cold. I bundled them up a ton but it was just too cold and we could barely stand to see Santa. So we left there and went to our friends house where we made individual pizza's.

 Aren't their little Chef hats and apron's adorable? It was so fun and yummy.

 We found a cut your own tree down really close to our house..so close I thought the gps was wrong but nope a tree farm right in the middle of a city. Luckily the trunk wasn't too thick and we got it down and strapped to the car in no time!

I'm so glad I checked my camera phone, I had forgotten so many were on their!

Some more fun in December!

 I have the funnest family! I couldn't go sledding with them but I could come and take pictures and fall down a few times while taking pictures.  They LOVE to go sledding. Luckily, they have a Dad that also loves to go sledding. we got a new sled this year that fits 3 on a big tube.  It was a lot of fun. I think they love it too because I always make a big pot of yummy hot chocolate when their done.

 This year for teacher gift's.  I made home made hot fudge and attached a coldstone gift card to it.  Easy and yummy!  Aren't those tags the cutest ever?

Christmas Eve we had kids with quite a few ants in their pants and so we called up our friends The Barton's and they met us at the church to play some kick ball. It was perfect and lot's of fun!