One Month

Our little Megan is one month old today. I can't believe it. She is doing well. She definitely has her fussy times, but other times she will sleep for 8 hours. (We are working to get those long chunks of sleep at night.) She has outgrown the newborn diapers and has the cutest little chubby cheeks. We just love her and love the way she completes our family.

Big brother Jonny loves his little sister.

So sleepy...

With cousin Lily (6 months older than Megan)


Bath time.

Richard returned to work yesterday and I survived. It was such a huge blessing that he was able to be at home for so long. He stayed super busy driving the kids here and there, organizing the house (we can even park in the garage again!), and potty-training Jonny. Yes, you read that right folks...Jonny is potty-trained. (Aren't you glad you are reading this blog???) I really didn't think he was ready, but after a few days of getting hosed off after every accident, Jonny decided he didn't like being wet all the time. And we are glad. He and Daddy are the best of buds and Jonny sure misses having Dad home all day. (We all do actually.) He is an amazing dad!

One thing I do not miss is the beard that Richard grew the whole month. Even Megan didn't like it.


He finally shaved it off (in stages) the night before going back to work. Here's our favorite:


I guess he wants me to kiss him after all.

A few days after bringing Megan home, Rebecca got braces. She was so excited to get them. She quickly decided that braces are not all that exciting and actually quite painful. After the first few days, the pain went away and life is good again.


I can't believe how fast they all grow up.

She's here! Introducing...

Megan Camille Eldredge



Born: Saturday, January 8, 2011 at 6:51am
Weight: 7 lbs. 10 oz. Length: 20 in.

Mom and baby Megan are home and doing well now. We are learning how to be parents of FIVE kids (every seat in our van is now occupied-Yikes!). Richard is able to be home for a few weeks and stays very busy taking care of everyone. The kids are all so in love with Megan and want to hold her any chance they get. Jonny is being soft with her (most of the time) but doesn't like sharing mommy very much.


Labor and delivery...don't worry, I won't go into detail here...was painful! Let's just say the epidural didn't do what it was supposed to do. I feel like I can count myself among those women who go through natural childbirth, even though I fully intended to NOT go through that much pain. Ever. However, by some miracle, I survived. Dr. Tutt was awesome and helped Megan turn the right way. We are just so glad that part is over and we have a wonderful, healthy, beautiful little girl.


Thank you all for your love and support, calls, texts, posts on facebook, visits, etc. It means so much to me!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (a little late)

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season this year. It went by too quickly for us, but it was still good and we enjoyed spending time together.

And before any of you wonder further, I am still pregnant. My due date is January 13th, and this baby just isn't quite done yet, and I am ok with that. :) I was worried that I might have her early, but thankfully she didn't want a birthday too close to the holidays.
Here are a few pictures from our Christmas. Santa must have thought we were all pretty good this year. He brought us a Wii, but we were all too excited to take any pictures of that. :) I love watching the kids get so excited over their presents.
Katie got a new baby doll, lots of princess Barbies, and new roller skates, among other things.

Jonny was in Ball and Train Heaven this year. He really got excited over each and every present. He was especially fun to watch.


The older girls are not into toys as much this year. They both got new video mp3 players, which were a big hit. Breanna also got new roller skates. She and Katie spent most of the day wearing them.



Rebecca got a book entitled "Harry Potter Film Wizardry," which captured her attention most of the day. You can see she would not even put it down to open other presents.

It was a good year, but I would not recommend being this pregnant over Christmas (if you can at all help it). It is hard to move around and to have energy to do everything I want to do. But we are thankful for all of our blessings(including being pregnant) and most of all, we are so thankful for the birth, life, and atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. We hope you feel His peace throughout the New Year!

Quick Catch-up Post

I wish I was better at keeping up with this blog. It really gets frustrating to play catch-up all the time. So I won't have time today to go into too much detail about the last month (almost two) but I'm sure no one who reads this cares too much. :)
Thanksgiving was good. We had the Eldredge feast over here, and thankfully, I didn't have to cook too many things. Richard's oldest brother, Lynn, and his family stayed with us for a few days. Our girls had so much fun getting to know their older girl cousins. Fun times!



After company went home, we decided to move all the kids into the rooms where they will be when the baby comes. Jonny now is in a queen size bed in the blue room (the better to have company come and stay), Rebecca and Breanna are once again sharing a room (which Becca just LOVES), and Katie will be sharing with the new baby girl. It was a lot of work, and their rooms are still in the process of being put back together, so no pictures yet. :)
Then it was Katie's 5th birthday! She had her first friend party this year. She was so excited and the little princesses all seemed to have a great time. Later that day our family went to Chuck E. Cheese and then to Krispy Kreme. What a fun day!
The big gift this year was a doggie pillow pet. What more could a 5 year old want?


Rebecca participated in the school spelling bee again this year. She did great, especially for not studying the words very much. :) We were all looking forward to her first band concert (she plays the flute), but she got very sick that same day and had to miss it. Her sickness kicked off a week or more of the entire family being sick with fevers, coughs, and runny noses. Not a fun week.
And now, Christmas is just a few days away. Our baby is due in 3 weeks and I am very content to wait the entire 3 weeks. Our official Christmas greetings will be New Year's greetings, so we can include a picture of the new baby. I guess we really should start deciding on a name. :)
Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

Hectic Halloween

The last few weeks have been so hectic for us. I won't try to list everything that made it hectic for me, because I really don't want to put my brain to any more work than I have to. One of the major things that helped increase the "hecticness" level was a primary leadership training meeting that I helped with last week. I have to say I love my calling (to help with primary music) and the wonderful ladies that I serve with. I also really appreciate the people who serve on the ward level and all the work they do every week to help teach the children. The meeting went well, but the preparation for this biannual meeting is always stressful to some extent (mostly because I put so much off till the last minute...will I ever learn???).
Anyway, the rest of last week is kind of a blur. I know all Halloween preparations were very rushed and last minute because that was not at the top of my priorities. Richard ended up having to work many long hours, including late Friday night, most of Saturday (like 5am to 9pm), and quite a bit on Sunday. (He has a big project that is due this week and is under a lot of pressure to get it done.) So that left the parenting and Halloween festivities up to me. I'll tell you right now, I would not do well as a single parent. I rely on my good husband for so much, especially when I am pregnant and have a hard enough time just walking around. But the kids and I made it to both the school festival (for 3 long, hot hours) and the ward trunk-or-treat on Saturday, and we all survived. Here are some pictures to prove we did Halloween:

Rebecca, a leaf blower (get it??) (Oh yeah, she won a fish, but I made her give it back. We aren't ready for another one just yet.)

Breanna, a vampire queen, showing off her winnings from a guessing game (cheeseballs, anyone?)

Katiebug, the ladybug

Jonny, shown here in his Buzz Lightyear pajamas (He refused to wear something that felt like a costume. It wasn't worth a fight.)


My main reason for sharing all of this with the blogging world (heck, there's only a couple of people who will even read this) is to share the small lesson I learned through all this hecticness. I was sitting in church (by myself, because Richard was at work and the kids chose not to get ready in time, grrr...) and trying to keep my composure, as I was exhausted and hormonal and not feeling like a very good mom. The opening song was "The Lord is my Light" and several phrases started making me teary eyed. But when we got to the third verse I had to run out to the bathroom and have a minor meltdown. The phrase that really got to me was

"My weakness in mercy he covers with pow’r,
And, walking by faith, I am blest ev’ry hour."

I am so weak in many ways. But mercifully, the Lord covers those weaknesses with His power and continually blesses me. Sure, things get hectic every so often, but we always make it through by His mercy and power, and in no other way.

Now, if only someone could mercifully save me from the laundry.....

October Break

We had a wonderful October break last week, although we didn't go on a grand vacation or do lots of exciting things around here. Instead, we had lots of fun sleeping in and staying up late, not doing homework, not running to various lessons (or even practicing for said lessons), and generally just relaxing. What made it even better, we got to visit with lots of family!
My eldest sister, Jeanie, spent the week visiting from Montana. She had to come down for some work training workshop and she was able to extend her stay to visit with us. It is always so fun when Jeanie visits because she spoils us all rotten.


We always eat really yummy food, which for our family, is the most important part of any activity. I didn't get many pictures of all the good food, because I was too busy eating it.


Mommy's little piggy! (When you have chocolate cake in front of you, it is imperative to get it in your mouth, no matter the method.)


Gary REALLY likes whipped cream. :)

The kids enjoyed playing outside all week. The weather is starting to cool off a bit, enough that they don't have a heat stroke at least. They really enjoyed playing with glowsticks from Grandma Kay and Grandpa Towne.



They also have their own "Fairy Land" and are apparently experts at making Fairy Pie. Here is the recipe if you need it.


Too much partying for Jeanie and Isabella...


On Friday night, we had all the Eldredge family (that could make it) over to celebrate Richard's dad's 70th birthday, as well as Hailey's 13th birthday. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures, but Annette posted several on facebook. It was fun to see Cindy, who flew down from Washington, as well as the AZ people that we don't get to see very often. The kids always have fun together, and despite all the chaos of the evening, it was a great night. (Sorry to my neighbors for all the noise.) :)

Now the kids are back in school and we are back on a normal(?) routine, which is good too. I still can't believe October is winding down already and I am entering the third trimester of this pregnancy. January will be here before we know it. (Let's hope my body can survive 3 more months!)

Birthdays, Bug bites, . . . Battlestar Galactica

Ok, so really there will be no mention of Battlestar Galactica as I haven't watched that show since I was really little (the original series...wasn't there a dog/robot thing in it?), but for those who really know me, the title is of course a reference to an episode of "The Office." If you don't know about that, well, that is sad. :)

Anyway, so to catch up on the rest of September (I really can't believe it is October!), we had two big birthdays to celebrate. Richard turned 35! But the poor guy didn't really get a good birthday celebration due to his work. He actually put in 35 hours the day before his birthday. (Chew on that one.) We said we would make it up sometime to him, but he was always so busy that we just ended up rolling his birthday into Becca's birthday and had a double-whammy of a celebration.

Rebecca turned 11 this past week. I can't believe my little girl is growing up so much. Richard was finally able to take a day off. We had a yummy breakfast before she had to go to school. Then Richard decided to work on the brakes (fun day-off activity). Then we had lunch with her at school. Afterwards, Richard and I went cell phone shopping, as he really wants a new one, but can't decide on what to get. (He still hasn't decided.) It was an early release day, so as soon as the girls were done with school, we all (including cousins Emily and Kacy) went to Amazing Jake's for some indoor amusement fun. When we dragged in the door that night, we were all ready to drop, but we had a few fun presents for the birthday people to open. Fun day, but this old pregnant lady isn't as spry as she once was. :)

Rebecca talked us into having a little party (or Girls' Night Out) with 7 of her closest friends. They had a blast eating, painting nails, doing hair, watching movies, and just being silly. They had a great time. (I have no desire to paint another nail for quite a while.)

On to the bug bites....As I mentioned in my last post, Jonny got attacked by mosquitoes one night. The next day several of the bites were huge and red. It seems the little guy is quite sensitive to bites. His ear was extremely red and swollen for 2 days. Nothing a little Benedryl won't fix, but still.... He continues to attract bugs, getting a new bite or two every so often. Now, if the girls want to get him to come inside, they just start telling him there are ants coming and he hurries inside.

In other news, we had a nice little visit with Grandpa Towne and Grandma Kay a few weeks ago. They came for a concert that Kay's grandsons were involved with and for Debbie's baby's blessing. It was nice to have them stay with us and have the kids develop a stronger bond with them. As always, Dad had to tell a "Ralph, the Big, Fat Elephant" story. Such fun!


In all honesty, our month had much more going on than just this, but this is about all I feel like blogging about right now. And probably all anyone wants to read about. :)