February 2009

This was obviously one of my favorite months this year, as we welcomed our baby Scarlet into the world. We decided for sure on her name in the hospital after she was born. We had gone back & forth but once we positively decided her middle name it really narrowed it down for us. Her middle name is Rozell, named after her late grandmother. We can only hope that she’s half as sweet.We've been trying harder to get pictures of our entire family at events instead of just the kids. It seems like for years one of us was always behind the camera. So unfortunately, you'll probably see a lot more of Vaughn and I than you'd prefer.

Well this is it. I think this is one of the last belly shots before she was born. This is 5 days before the big day. It was a brutal pregnancy but so very worth it.

Even though I can't stand messes I insist on my kids making one on just about every holiday. They really enjoy it & I truly enjoy watching them having fun. Sometimes the cookies just don't look edible...I make my own.More Star Wars at our house. I don't know why I had the camera in the garage but they were dressed (or not dressed) as Jedi's who lost their hands in battle.
Finally, our sweet little princess. Scarlet was born on February 19th & she has been a real blessing. We love her so much & she makes our family feel complete.

The 5 of us. It's amazing how quickly our family has grown. We look forward to many new adventures.

Unfortunately one of our new adventures included one to a children's hospital for a few days. Scarlet went home as scheduled only to be returned to Hoag Hospital because she momentarily stopped breathing. They transmitted her by ambulance to CHOC where she went through many tests & an IV that nobody could get in. You can see the IV that they finally put in her head after trying for probably about 6 hours at 2 hospitals with maybe 10+ people & each person doing multiple attempts. Her arm in this picture tells part of the story. She was a trooper & a strong little soul. Nothing ended up being wrong with her other than what we think was a "reflux episode" as we call them. We went through them with Ashlyn so it seemed somewhat familiar. One thing's for sure is they don't take any chances with a 2 day old.

We were so happy to bring her home. And this is what we came home to. Fortunately they are clean. Leave it to Ashlyn to brighten things up & put a smile on your face. The kids were in a bit of a funk after us being gone & then back & then gone again. I don't think they trusted that we weren't leaving again.

This is our little girl who slept quite a bit after we got back. We hadn't seen her crazy hair for days since she was all bandaged up. She has the most amazing head of hair out of all of our kids.

And what did we do a week after we got back from the hospital?...started Little League. It wasn't even 10 days after Scarlet was born that we had all 3 kids at the field & we started our volunteer efforts including me being Team Mom. It was pretty crazy. Kaden was so proud to be in uniform on Opening Day.