I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.
Can I just say how blessed I am. I love love love my husband. I am so grateful that he chose me to spend eternity with. He sure helps me make really cute kids too. I just can't get enough of my cuties. We are excited to see what Baby Luke looks like and what sort of personality he will have.
It is OFFICIAL... I am a mini van Mom. I never ever ever thought I would be excited to drive a minivan, but OH MY GOSH I love it so much.
It came in perfect time because we found it on Saturday and had to wait till Tuesday for funds to come through (our bank is in Utah) and on Sunday night our transmission went out in our Sonata (the car I drive).
We also get to have a sweet ride up to St. George for Christmas. We are so blessed.
The guy who sold it to us is a minister in another church and doesn't have any kids and when we were about to drive away he said "Well, go fill it up with lots of kids, use it for what a minivan was made for".... I guess we're working on it.
Okay who else agrees with me... HOLIDAYS can be so HECTIC especially when you have 6 chiefs and no Indians to follow the chiefs. Oh well, it was definitely more WONDERFUL than it was hectic and I am so glad we were able to all be together.
We even managed to get a picture with all of the Vaughn Stuart posterity (except Kaden... he was camping and we were running out of time).
I can't help but laugh at the funny picture!!!
We had so much fun over the Halloween weekend. Our besties from Cedar came down with their two little "things" to spend some quality time together.
We went to the train park on Saturday morning and we all had a blast. We were all kind of tired when we got home... especially the twins.
We went to our ward's trunk or treat on Saturday and sadly I forgot to get pics of my kiddos... :(... But the twins were "Thing 1" and "Thing 2"... they were the hit of the party.
Having fun trick or treating. We got way too much candy.
We LOVED hanging with you guys and hope it becomes an annual Halloween trip. You have to admit it's the PERFECT trick or treating weather here in AZ.
We had such a fun day today for Kevin's Birthday. We had a birthday breakfast with his cousins and then opened presents. 
He got 4 airplanes from his cousin Anthony which were the hit of the day with all the kids!!
Then we took all the kids to the train park and road TWO trains and the carousel. 
Kevin has been obsessed with tying things up lately so Grandma and Grandpa Endsley bought him a bunch of caribiners and rope, with a custom sherrif's badge to match. Here he is tying the "bad guy" to the "ship" (the unfinished bunk bed). He got this present later in the day but it was definitely his favorite.
I have a friend who recently went private on her blog as well and she hit on a point of why she hates private blogs...which I TOTALLY agree with and am stealing her idea from. Once you go private you cannot see when people update. So I am following in her footsteps (thanks Janell) I am keeping my old blog address open so you can see when I update. Also so that if anyone missed my blog invite or finds me through some sort of search engine and wants to view the real blog just leave a comment below and I will invite you.
It's a BOY!!!
It was clear as day that the next baby Endsley will be a rambunctious little boy. He was moving ALL over the place. His hands were in his mouth then up by his head then back to his mouth then down on his leg then back to his head. He was twisting all around and got the hiccups at least once I think it might have been twice. He is so active. We sure are in for it.
So we have a name in mind, but want to know what you think would go well with Kevin and Katie.
I still can't believe it's a boy. I don't think it will set in for a few weeks but I am so glad to finally be able to call him a HE rather than an IT.
Kevin has an Uncle who is SO COOL!! (he really loves him). Jeremy LOVES (understatement really) Mustangs. He owns 3 cars... all of them are mustangs.
ANYWAY Kevin has understood since he was little that Mustangs are in fact really called Jeremy cars. EVERYWHERE we go Kevin points out a Jeremy car here or a Jeremy car there. He sees them far before either Adam or I. He has truly become an expert on spotting these things.
So Jeremy for your birthday we thought we would post a tribute to you. Kevin got to borrow a Jeremy car for 15 minutes while we got these shots. He also got to RIDE in this cool car a few weeks ago and you would have thought he had just seen Santa Claus.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEREMY!!! We love you (especially Kevin)
Kevin started preschool in August and is truly loving it. I am so glad I caught a couple pictures of him right before he went. It is so fun to see him learning, he is so smart.
This is the first shot I got before I adjusted lighting but I had to put it in cuz he is making the best face.
He was SO excited to wear his army guy shoes, army guy shorts and camo shirt. LOVED it.
WARNING: THIS IS THE LONG VERSION OF ADAM'S HOSPITAL STAY FOR MY RECORDS :)
On Saturday it marked a year to the date that Adam went into the hospital with HORRIBLE pain in his stomach. We had NO idea what was in our future at that point. It has been quite the year. I am not sure how Adam would describe it but for me it was a little slice of (excuse my wording) Hell!! But also a whole lot of growth and strengthening which I would describe as getting closer to Heaven. Here is the timeline of last years events.
August 30th: He started feeling really bad
August 31st: Came home from work early (he was acting CLEAR in the head so I could not fathom that he was actually sick because when you are sick with the flu or something it makes you sort of out of it... I am horrible!!)
Sept 1st: Stayed home from work, pain was getting worse(I thought he was overreacting). We had our friend Trent, who is a P.A., come for a house call and he tried to help him but we were all sort of puzzled
Sept 2nd: REALLY not feeling well and he got a blessing.
Sept 3rd: We tried a lot of things to get the pain to go away... NOTHING worked. I thought if he just had a good bathroom go he would be fine. Of course he had nothing in his guts to get out cuz he hadn't eaten much of anything solid for 3 days at this point. He told me he wanted to go to the hospital at like 12 (and I was like "whatever", so I laid the kids down at our friend Amanda's house. He decided to hold off and see if sleeping would help any. It didn't. Finally around 4 we went to the hospital.
I have to admit at this point I was sure we needed to be at the hospital but I was really not aware of how high his pain was. When they got him back there and assessed his pain he told them it was an 8 or a 9. WHAT!! I had no idea. They gave him a shot of Morphine as soon as his IV was in. At this point I was feeling so terrible that I hadn't believed him and started to really worry about what was going on inside him. (he has a blood clotting factor that he is on blood thinners for and I worried that it was something like that).
*He got a cat scan
*results came back pretty fast that it was Pancreatitis. We didn't even know how to say that word let alone spell it or have ANY idea what that meant or how you get it.
*Nurse that told us said, "You usually get it from drinking too much"... um ya he has never had an alcoholic beverage before. "oh well then it is probably something to do with your gallbladder and they will probably have to take it out" UM NO... I won't let them do that (I had heard some horror stories about having your gallbladder out and was certain it would never come to that!!)
*He was admitted to the hospital
*AMAZING PEOPLE IN OUR WARD offered to completely help out with our kids. THANK YOU EVERYONE!!
*We waited around for the doctor, who never came.
*Meantime he was moved off morphine and given something that is 10 times stronger called Diladed. It was then that he was finally able to sleep a little.
*I went to get the kids at 11 from Merri's house and we went home to sleep.
*I don't really remember the next few days but recall only that I went to the hospital 2-5 hours a day to "help" him but felt that he was pretty much in a drug induced sleep state and I felt like I wasn't really help at all so I would leave to take care of the kids.
People at church asked me how he was and I thought he was feeling fine as long as the drugs were in him (the deal with Pancreatitis is you have to just WAIT for the inflammation in pancreas to go down which meant he was pretty much on water and some clear liquids for like a week. There is NOTHING they can give you or do that will stop the inflammation, it really is a waiting game.)
By Sunday nights visit it was clear that he needed and wanted me around ALL THE TIME. Which meant 24 hour care for our kids. I arranged that with the help of the amazing sisters in the relief society and my own sisters.
The Dr. told us that he needed to get up and move around that laying in bed was not going to help him any. This was almost an impossible thought for Adam. He was hurting all the time at this point. The Diladed was to its maximum legal dose and he was still not able to really relax. He had to go 2 hours between doses and he would wake up with 30-45 minutes left before he could get another dose. So our this became our routine...
Diladed into his IV
Sleep restlessly for and hour or so
Get the nurse to unhook his cords (which always took forever) so we try to go to the bathroom and walk around
Walk the halls
over and
over and
over and
over
the whole time he would be in pain, I would be on the brink of emotional breakdown and we just had to keep moving forward.
He would burp loudly while we walked the halls trying to get some of the trapped gas out of his stomach (this is actually what caused him so much pain, his stomach was so full of trapped gas.)
Get back to the room
go to the bathroom again
help him lay down
call the nurse
W A I T for the clock
finally another dose of Diladed
and it all started over again.
24 hours in a day, only 12 doses of liquid relief... tired, tired, so so tired.
Not just fatigued, exhausted emotionally, mentally, I hardly need to say physically. We never knew when the final relief was coming. It just kept being the same day after day after day.
I slept on the little couch they had in his room. I was so grateful to by his side to help him even at 3 in the morning and again at 5 and again at 7. He said that when I was not there he felt panicked and even more uneasy. As soon as I would show up a wave of relief would come over him. I cannot tell you how much closer this experience brought us to each other and to our GOD. Even as I write this tears come when I think of how much Heavenly Father loves us.
There was a moment in the hospital that was quite pivotal for me. It is personal and sacred but I share it because most of my "blog" readers probably aren't going to read this long post and those who do deserve to know my feelings. It was in the hours between Diladed doses that I had an awe inspiring experience. My husband was in severe pain. Almost crying. My strong wonderful husband was almost brought to tears for pain. AND THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD DO TO HELP HIM OR CHANGE HIS CIRCUMSTANCE. I thought of our Father in Heaven and His Power and His wisdom and His Omnipotence. He could do something to help my husband, but he wasn't. I knew He would if it were best for my Adam. He certainly would. But He saw greater wisdom in the experience than I could. I then was so very aware of a tiny part of what He must have felt when His own begotten son was in the Garden of Gethsemane going through the most anguish anyone has ever had to endure. A father who LOVED His son with everything that He had wanting to help Him and make Him better and TOTALLY having the power to do so. But for the greater plan... the plan of salvation, of happiness of REDEMPTION, he not only stayed His hand from helping our Savior ease His pain, He even saw the wisdom in painfully withdrawing His spirit from Jesus for ONE PURPOSE. To bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of MAN. I cannot even imagine the feelings our God must have had at that point. KNOWING He could help His PERFECT son, but that if He did, He would lose all of His other children in the process.
Right then I knew and still know, MY FATHER IN HEAVEN sees the whole picture. He knows what will make us stronger. He wants us to LEAN ON HIM AND HIS SON. Only then are we strong enough to go through anything and everything. He loves us.
Adam was in the hospital from Friday the 3rd to Saturday the 11th. 8 days of "waiting" for something to improve. He had many procedures done to see what was taking so long. The results were always... Wait and see. It was horrible. But the love that deepened between us and God was and still is amazing.
Adam's Dad and sister Mariah came down on Thursday night to be with Adam. Bill took turns walking the halls with Adam and Mariah took care of the kids for us. I know that his whole family would have been there in a heartbeat had circumstances allowed but having Bill and Mariah there was a comfort for all of us.
The next 6 weeks were pretty much a routine for Adam as well. The pain was still there but could be managed on a narcotic instead of Diladed. I slept on an air mattress in the loft for the first two weeks. Finally, seeing I would be there longer I had a friend Mitch Borden bring over a mattress my sister wasn't using. I slept there for another 2 weeks. The whole time hearing Adam get up in the middle of the night and walk the bedroom for relief of the gas in his stomach. I would go in every once in a while and help him out or keep him company.
The night I got to move back into the room was surreal. He felt well enough to sleep mostly through the night except for a few downstairs excursions to walk around so he wouldn't wake me.
I think in total he missed 8 weeks of work and was still reluctant to go back because of pain. But he did finally. They were so good to work with him on all his sick time off.
Now it has been a year and he deals with pain everyday. He just isn't himself yet. He did end up getting his gallbladder out about 2 months ago and that went well and he recovered normally.
We are going to start an herb regime next week to strengthen his digestive tract and pancreas. We will keep you posted.
Here we are already in week 13 of the pregnancy with Endsley kid #3. I can't believe time has flown by so fast!! I think the current two crazies I have, my church calling, and working just made me so busy I haven't had time to count the days or weeks of this pregnancy. We are excited though. It seems so weird that I am old enough to have 3 kids. I have been a little sicker with this one but the kids and the hubby are very accommodating and understanding. We are really blessed and can't wait to find out what this kid is!!
So Friday was our 5 year wedding Anniversary and we decided it was finally time to get away just the two of us. We planned on Sedona and our good wonderful amazing friends the Bartons tackled our kids for us from Thursday night to Saturday afternoon. We had a great first night there and planned to SLEEP IN since we had no kids to interrupt our slumber... only problem was I FORGOT TO PLAN FOR THE KID GROWING IN MY BELLY!! (YES I AM PREGNANT YEAH!!!) I woke up at 7:30 STARVING and needing to go potty then I could not fall asleep. Adam had a different story. He is coming of a pretty mild pain medication that he has relied on for a whole year to calm his stomach issues from the pancreatits and about a week ago decided to be done with it COLD TURKEY. Well this means he can't calm down and even though he is so tired unless he takes something small he can't relax enough to get into deep sleep, and of course his medicine for sleeping fell out of his pocket somehow before we left.
When we got up, we forced smiles on our faces, ate a REALLY expensive breakfast and trudged around the town pretending to be interested but really just wanting to get back to sleep. I wasn't feeling good because I am only 10 weeks along, he wasn't feeling good cuz he didn't sleep well, we were both hungry and tired and ultimately the day was sort of a bust. We basically spent our anniversary in two separate rooms watching two different shows. It was pretty pathetic.
We did however sleep in the next morning (almost missed check out time) and ended our trip hanging out with the Bartons and our kids and it turned out OK. We rushed back to Gilbert to drop our kids off yet again to our wonderful friends the Batchelors while we went to see the play my cousin Rob is in at the Hale Centre Theatre "Little Shop of Horrors" which was REALLY funny and a great end to our weekend.
Once we got home we decided never to leave again unless we are NOT SICK. Even though we didn't have a great anniversary day, it comes down to the fact that I would rather spend time with him doing NOTHING than being apart from him. He is so amazing and I am so excited for the next of FOREVER.
Love you Husband!!!
Katie and I went on a trip up to Salt Lake for my cousin Lyndsi's wedding. It was so fun... and tiring. I realize now that I only got ONE clear picture of me and Katie. I had to put this one in though and I think you can see why.
I was so excited to use my camera a little and stayed behind it most of the time. I love learning more and more about it and think I grabbed some good shots. It sure helps that Lyndsi and Jon are such a cute couple too.
Grandpa Prows and Lyndsi
Katie LOVED dancing to the live music at the reception.
She was SO tired but still so cute. I woke her up at 5:30 when she normally sleeps till 9. She only had an hour and a half nap when she normally takes a 3 or 4 hour nap, and she didn't go to bed till 10:30 when she usually goes to bed at 7:30. She was still so happy though.
Mommy and Daddy
Katie... oh what do we say about our little Katie bug??? She makes us laugh and she also makes us worry a bit... she has a lot of spunk and personality and she kind of gets away with it because she is so freakin' cute.
Here is her latest little antic.
These are the couches we have had for 5 years... we got them for $100 about 3 weeks after living couch less in our apartment when we got married. They have served us well, although they are not very comfortable, they work for now.
This is how they look now after a brief encounter with Katie and an orange Sharpie. Silly Mommy leaving the marker out!! Kevin never did stuff like this so I forget to be be more cautious. We could just flip the cushion over but this is just the reason Adam was looking for to replace these things.
I told her to come show me what she did for the camera and this is what she gave me... attitude!!
Apparently she is proud of her artwork.
I have an amazing husband. He is sweet and caring and such a great Daddy. He works hard for us and loves to be with our family. Most of you know this already, but he has had some health issues since he was admitted to the hospital because he had Pancreatitis. He has been battling pain since then so they did an endoscopy to see what was going on. Apparently his gallbladder was full of stones and needed to come out. So... here we are at the Hospital again just before surgery. It has been 3 weeks since the surgery and everything is healing nicely. He still has an inflamed pancreas but things should start turning up for him now that there are no possibilities of stones getting lodged in the duct to the Pancreas.
Even though he is sometimes a sickly, I sure do need him and love him.
Our 4th was relaxed and FUNtastic! We woke up late, went to breakfast, relaxed while the kids napped and hung out with Tiersa's inlaws swimming and eating great food with fireworks to end the night.
Out to Breakfast
Katie REALLY doesn't like taking pictures, especially if she hasn't eaten yet.
They are so cute
Can we just focus on Katie's perfect piggy curl. I didn't curl this... it just did it on it's own. Too bad her nap ruined it.
Kevin has been so cute and helpful lately. I can't believe how much I love each stage he goes through. Here are some pictures of what we have been up to lately.
Kevin has been so excited for Cars 2 to come out, Adam even surprised him with Cars 2 cereal. So on the morning the movie came out he requested Cars cereal in his Cars bowl with his Cars spoon which is TOTALLY a balanced breakfast!!! 
Kevin usually gets up around 7 and Mommy doesn't get up until 7:30 or 8. He plays so quietly I barely hear him and usually comes in when he is ready for Breakfast (okay judge me if you want but I am NOT a morning person and it works well for us). Anyway a few mornings in a row he requested help with his Thomas puzzle and was quite frustrated that he couldn't put it together by himself. I obliged and we would work on it together. A week or two after our last puzzle completion he came in talking about it and I thought he wanted help with it, but instead I came into find that he had finished it all by himself!! I was so proud of him. He has also been coming into me fully dressed in the morning and most of the time he matches REALLY well.
I ask Kevin to do some things to help out around the house to teach him to serve and do his part. A lot of those things I ask him to do have something to do with helping Katie. This is him attempting to put Katie's shoes on... he was unsuccessful but it was worth a try. One day he will get it and it will help me a lot.
Despite our 100+ degree weather Kevin was adamant about wearing these Tractor footy jammies given to us by our Gibson friends (I think). He loved them even though it probably made him sweat like a pig. I turned his fans up extra high that night and he seemed to do fine.
Even though I had all sorts of plans for Adam for his birthday he had to go and change them all up on me. It still ended up working out though, we visited family in St. George then drove home on Monday. I timed it just right so that when we got home our house was full of all our family and friends. He walked into a big surprise party. 
Adam didn't want a party cuz he didn't want to have to entertain people, but he loves ping pons so we had a ping pong party. This table was borrowed but we are on the hunt for our own used table since it is technically the only sport Adam can play with his blood condition.
Sisters and I
OUr friend Jeff and Adam playin' some mean ping pong
Happy Birthday Honey
Even Kevin got in on the action
Mitch and DJo with Adam
