Isaac’s Story

Shortly after we brought Isaac home from the hospital, a friend of our said, “So, I want to hear the story of Isaac’s birth!”  So for her sake, and Isaac’s, and posterity, and anyone else who wants to know, here it is.

Julie woke me up at 5:15 a.m. on March 29 and said, “Ken, I think my water broke.”  There should be a rule that when you are awakened unexpectedly, the first thing out of your mouth DOESN’T COUNT.  I say that because as I recall the first thing out of my mouth was something incredibly profound like, “What makes you think that?”  Ugh.  Thankfully, she still loves me.

We called Grandma to come watch the kids and were on our way to the hospital by 6:00.  Mark heard the commotion as we were leaving and woke up to excitedly see us off.  The contractions were about 4 1/2 minutes apart, and I obeyed some of the traffic laws as I drove to the hospital.  And here the story gets pretty boring.  They checked us in, put on the fetal monitors, and five hours later, Isaac made his grand entrance into mortality.  No drama, no crises, no surprises.  Just a perfect and miraculous birth.

And it truly felt miraculous.  Even after witnessing the birth of Isaac’s five older siblings, watching him be born was amazing – even sacred.  We are so grateful to welcome him to our family.One thing that made this a lot of fun was the fact that we didn’t know whether we were having a boy or a girl.  The nurses were excited for the surprise, and the doctor that delivered was great and let me make the announcement.

Isaac needed to be on a bilirubin bed for three days to bring his bilirubin count down.  What a blessing to have that technology.  He was completely content to lie on his light bed and let it work its magic.  I can’t imagine what we would have done if he would have been too fussy to lie there.

More celebrations!

My parents sent Mark a Taste of Home kids cookbook for his birthday and he’s been wanting to try out some of the recipes, so after church one Sunday he made us these tasty potato pancakes.  The recipe was simple enough as far as ingredients go and they were delicious, but shredding potatoes turned out to be a LOT more work than he though it would be and so Abbie and I chipped in to help shred and then pat dry the potatoes for him.  It was a good experience overall.One warm day the kids helped me plant the crocus and tulip bulbs my mom got me for Christmas.  Now we’re just waiting for them to pop up!!Jessie made this cute little turtle in her art class.  His shell even comes off so you can fill it.To celebrate Ken and David’s birthdays we had a full on turkey dinner.  Ken took the day off work and helped do the turkey and stuffing part.  Jessie made crescent rolls and the kids helped me make pumpkin pie.  Ken’s parents joined us for dinner and brought steamed carrots and a pear jello salad and David and Lisa brought a huge bowl of delicious garlic mashed potatoes.  We ate and we ate….and it was good! 

The kids really wanted to surprise David when he came in since we were celebrating his birthday too and they stuffed these little boxes with confetti and taped them to the ceiling.  All afternoon they were checking on them and checking to see if David had made it down to our house.  When he finally got here they pulled the string and…….nothing happened!!  All the papers were just stuck inside the boxes.  But there was enough commotion and excitement from them trying to do something, that thankfully, they weren’t too disappointed.

While Ken and I were out running some errands one of our good friends brought over this platter to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.  Isn’t it awesome!!  It’s grapefruit rinds filled with jello.  We enjoyed our rainbow for dinner.  SO FUN!  THANKS!!Ken came home early from work after teaching his Wednesday accounting class at UVU.  The kids were so excited to see him and since we had leftover hamburger patties that I had made and frozen from our last BBQ we decided to do a last minute BBQ.  It was a fun way to celebrate a normal day. Ken’s grandpa flew down for a visit and what do you know….more burgers!  It was really great to see family and be outside… yea for spring!Down at the Krishna temple they also celebrate spring with the chalk festival.  Basically you go and through colored chalk all over each other….anyway, it sounds like fun right?!  Jessie really wanted to go and ended up having a friend invite her.  She was SO SO excited!  Rachel also stopped by our house, after she and her roommates went, so she could take a shower and get ready for work.  We had a little get together with one of Ken’s friends that evening and I could NOT believe how totally packed all the roads downtown were.  I mean they would have had to walk over 2 miles to get to the temple.  But boy was it a colorful sight watching everyone walking back to their cars.

Beginning of March

Mark loves making pumpkin pie and suggests it every time I ask for input on dessert.  So after church he made the filling and I made the crust.  Having a fun dessert like that called for a celebration so we invited our awesome neighbors over to share it with us.  After dessert we played a game they brought over called Hit or Miss.  It was so fun.  Abbie and Brother Miller were a team and Spencer was with Ken.  You draw a card with a topic on it and everyone writes down as many answers as they can think of in the given time.  Then on your turn you roll a dice and get a “hit,” “miss,” or wild and you pick one of your answers that you either think everyone else wrote down or no one else wrote down.  We had a great evening and are so blessed to have such fun neighbors.

Neil has learned to climb out of his bed.  The first few nights after that were killer!  You feel so bad when he has to get in trouble, but after the fifth or so time coming out it starts to drive you crazy!  Well after his naps now he doesn’t like me to come get him.  He waves me out of the room with his hand so he can climb out of bed himself.  One afternoon someone went to check on him, because we knew he was awake, but he hadn’t come out yet….they found him reading a book he a managed to reach off the closet shelf.

Happy Birthday to Rachel!  Neil helped me make a real German Chocolate Cake from scratch from the Joy of Cooking.  And while it wasn’t hard it had a bazillion steps!  (And here’s a little trivia bit to amaze your friends with: did you know it’s called a German Chocolate cake not because it came from Germany, but because “German” was the last name of the guy who invented bakers chocolate that you use to put in the cake!)  Mark and Ken said the cake was worth all the steps and boy was I glad.  We celebrated at Rachel’s apartment and when it was time to go David tried on Spencer’s coat in an effort to get Spencer up and moving so we could go home.  Silly David  :-)!  We got Rachel this cute little frog prince salt shaker with a magnet crown for the pepper.  It was so stinkin’ cute!

Ken had a Credit Union conference up in SLC and so I went to spend the weekend with him and David and Lisa watched the kids.  I think the most eventful part of their evening was Neil choking on the spaghetti at the Young Women’s fundraiser dinner they took the kids too.  On Saturday David and Mark made this awesome shield together.  It was almost all the way done by the time I got home and boy have the boys LOVED playing with it (and so have the neighbor kids).

On Saturday Spencer lost his first tooth!  He has been so excited….unfortunately it fell out outside and we couldn’t even find it….it’s a good thing he has three more that are also loose.We celebrated Grandma Woodward’s birthday up in SCL with my dad’s family.  It was fun how many of the cousins were able to make it.  Grandma had all the grandkids around the table help blow out the candles for her.  Neil and Spencer were especially excited about that.  (And did you notice my little pyro is the one helping to lite the candles.)