Grandfatherly Advice

My sweet grandparents came up from Provo today for a visit and brought a few things with them. One of which was lunch! Woot! Woot! for KFC and PIZZA HUT all in one afternoon. Plus, my Papa Chuck also brought up with him LOADS of his family history photos. We were going to try and get them scanned in on his computer but we weren't really able to get that accomplished. So instead, I just got to hear a bunch of stories about different people in my family history.

As he was leaving, he asked if I "keep a journal" because someday I'm going to want to write down my life story and it would be a whole lot easier to remember if I write the important things down now or right when they happen. So his Grandfatherly Advice was to keep one.

When I mentioned that I "blog" our family events, I don't think he really understood what that meant. But I like to think of this blog as my "journal of events, hobbies and other happenings" in our family's life.

So in response to this advice, I thought I should blog about what my sweet little boys and I have been doing over the past week while Daddy has been at Basic Training.
Sunday: made it to Sacrament Meeting, had the whole family together for a few hours before Sam gave each of us Fathers Blessings and we dropped him off in Salt Lake.
Monday: Totally took it easy and lounged around the house, heard from Sam a few times as he flew to Missouri and arrived at Reception.
Tuesday: Went to IKEA with Gramma Bee and all three munchkins....what an adventure!
Wednesday: Walked with Gramma Montague in the morning, spent the afternoon clearing out and organizing my craft room so it's usable again.
Thursday: went to JoAnn Fabric before dropping Gramma Bee off at the airport
Friday: Lazy day around the house, did a little gardening though.
Saturday: got a visit from Gramma Sally and Papa Chuck, got a formal postcard from Sam saying that I should get a good address for him within this next week, went to a friend's wife's book signing with all the munchkins, updated the blog and now....to get dinner on the table.

Thanks for the advice Papa!

Keith's birth pictures

As Promised.....More Pictures....Gramma Bee with the newest Montague boy

Before his first bath....

After his first bath....sporting his awesome homemade hat.

Connor and Bear get introduced...

Our first Family of Five shot...

Three generations of Montague men

Mama and Keith

Going home!

Daddy's Little Peanut

Gramma's Little Peanut

Awwwww

Keith Asher Montague

He's arrived! Yay! I didn't have to be induced to get him here on time! Double Yay!! He waited for my mom to get here! Triple Yay!!! I only had to push once, maybe twice, to get him out! Quadruple Yay!!!!

Anyone want the whole story?

Sunday May 8: False labor begins and is rather intense at some points but never evens out into regular intervals.

Monday May 9: False labor wanes a bit as I go to work, picks up a little bit when I come home.

Tuesday May 10: False labor is pretty much gone, I go to work and continue to pray that my mom arrives on Wednesday night before this baby does.

Wednesday May 11: Braxton Hicks contractions all day but nothing really notable. Head to my midwife and find out that I'm 3cm dilated and 40% effaced. Get a nice visit with some friends and then off to the airport to pick up Mom. YAY!! She's here!

Thursday May 12: Walk a mile to the library and back: Ready to get this baby OUT!! Did some gardening with Mom and the boys. Start getting some more contractions a bit stronger but nothing really starts happening until dinner time. Meanwhile, Sam tells his boss that this is his last day at work before going into the Army. They have known for months so it really wasn't a surprise. In fact, they already cleared off his desk when he came in for work today. On Sam's way home from work, I tell him that I think the baby is coming tonight. Maybe it's just a gut feeling....or maybe it was the back pain that started coming with the irregular contractions.

When Sam gets home, my contractions start picking up in strength and speed. I lost my mucus plug around 6pm. Woot Woot! Bring on those contractions!

We start arranging everything for the boys to stay overnight and whatnot. Of course, after dinner, the contractions totally eased up and the boys are staying put for bed. After we put the boys down, we decided to go for a walk to try and get things going again. After talking with the neighbors for an hour, we go back home.

So I come in, flip on some Glee, and realize that my contractions are getting stronger as I'm watching it. Around 930pm they really start to get intense. Not exactly regular though. They ranged from 10 minutes apart to 3 min apart. But they were definitely getting stronger and I knew that I was going to have a baby before I went to sleep for the night.

We called Sam's parents around 1030pm to let them know that we needed them to come in and sleep here with the boys for the night. Around 11pm, I hop in the shower, in preparation for going to the hospital. Sam's parents come around 1130 and by about midnight we are on our way to Salt Lake Regional. I'm faithfully listening to my Hypnobabies tracks on my iPhone and mom is timing my contractions on Sam's watch. It was a relatively comfortable 45 min drive to the hospital as my contractions were about 7-9 minutes apart.

Once I got out of the car though, they came on so much faster. I had about 4 contractions from the emergency room to the labor and delivery desk. We got our room at about 1am and the nurse checked me at 115am. I was dilated to 4.5cm a 100% effaced. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but I knew I wasn't getting sent home :) They monitored me and the baby from about 1am-120am and said that they'd come back in about an hour to check on me.

I asked for a birthing ball and the nurse put a pad over it "just in case" my water decided to break on it's own. (Side note: I've never had this happen with either Connor or Bear's birth.)

Once we were left to ourselves, I got on the birthing ball and the contractions continued to intensify.

Sam is the best birth partner. He found the PERFECT place on my back to push through each contraction. It was awesome!

At 145am my water broke all over the birthing ball, down my legs and into my slippers.....awesome, just awesome. Once my water is broken, baby is never far behind. Well, same thing here.

We all starting yelling when my water broke so my sweet nurse Sandra came in, checked me....7cm dilated...and ran quickly to call my midwife and log the time. That's when the real screaming started....no sooner had they gotten me semi-cleaned up from mass liquid leakage, I felt the urge to push. Sandra basically drops what she's doing, and yells for assistance as my midwife, is not arrived yet.....she got called like 2 min earlier.

About 1 and a half pushes later, Keith Asher Montague is out and in my arms. He was born at 150am. My midwife arrived at 157am. My nurse smiles sweetly at her and says, "Well, we saved the placenta for you to deliver." There was a bit of laughter at that.

Although it was super fast, it was a great birth and I'm so grateful that we left for the hospital when we did.

After having Keith home for a couple days, we love him more and more. He's great at nursing and actually nurses surprisingly fast for an infant of 4 days old. Connor and Bear both love their little brother and always want to help and touch his soft hands and head.

Bear pretty much refuses to call him Keith and only refers to him as "my brudder". Very comical.

More pictures to come.

Final Belly Shot

Since I have every intention of having this baby before the end of the week, I thought I should log one final belly shot picture. All together now..... awwwwww!

I think my arms have gained more mass than most other parts of me(excluding belly obviously!) Anyone know any good arm exercises for a stay at home mom of three boys? Spanking, you say!? hmmmmm.....tempting....... :)

A Crocheter who....knits?

I can vividly remember my Great Grandma Helene teaching me to crochet in front of the Christmas tree when I was younger than 8 years old. And I've made several crocheted items. A couple afghans, scarves, hats, doilies, etc. However, as I did some of the last couple projects, my wrist started to pop as I did it. Not exactly comfortable...

So I pretty much stopped that type of crafting and moved into other needle crafts such as cross stitching which doesn't require so much wrist action. I'd never considered knitting though....until....one day, I came across a Sock knitting book at the library, brought it home and decided I needed to give it a try. I had no idea where to start until I found out that a friend of mine, Phoebe, is a knitting expert....seriously, you should see her creations.

Anyway, she volunteered to teach me and so I showed up with a skein of yarn and lots of excitement.

Phoebe mentioned while I was there for my first class a site called www.ravelry.com

It's like Facebook for knitters and crocheters. How ridiculous is it that I'd never even heard of it!? Anyway, this site is SO FUN!!! It has tons of free patterns and the best search filters ever that allow you to find EXACTLY what you are looking for. From needle/hook size to yarn weight and difficulty level. So I went home, found an easy scarf pattern I wanted to try and got going on it.

And I'm still working on it but what I really want to do....is socks, remember? So I figured a hat would be a good start but not quite as complex as a pair of socks.

Well, with all the mistakes and imperfections in it, I still LOVE how it turned out. Plus, my wrist doesn't bother me AT ALL when I'm knitting! It's so nice to work with yarn again.

Plus, I can't wait to put it on my new little ones head in the next 2 WEEKS!!!! I mean, can you believe it? He's almost here!

Moab 2011

What better way to get back in the swing of blogging than with a BIG vacation post with lots of pictures, right?

RIGHT!!! I knew you were with me :)

So Sam spent months planning this trip to Moab and I sincerely hope that I wasn't too much of a drag for him to enjoy it. We normally camp when we go....well, that was out of the question for me this go-round. So we compromised and stayed in a cabin at a campground. I should've taken a picture of it. For "roughin it", it was AWESOME! Electricity, Heat, A/C, mini fridge, cable TV, firepit, patio, bunk beds and to top it all off, bathrooms on-site and close. I think Sam's idea of camping is forever changed. We had a BLAST!

After an 8.5 hour road trip(Yes, I realize that's WAY longer than it should take) we made it to Moab at 1130pm and snuggled into our little cabin. We slept in the next morning but Sam was chomping at the bit to get on the trails, so we headed to Metal Masher. Sounds relaxing right?

Rocks. YES!!!

Great pic of my handsome hubby in front of Picture Frame Arch.

Climbing Hummer Hill. Seriously, SO STEEP.

At the summit of Hummer Hill. I wasn't even going to attempt it.

Taking a Fruit Snack break on the trail. Seriously, those things are the best bribe ever.

If I'd said, "Fruit Snacks" I could've gotten a smile, I guarantee it.

Our campground had a great playground complete with sandbox, sand toys, and playhouse.

PEEK A BOO!

Our one and only family shot. This rock bench was so awesome.

Doing some cave exploring....

ROCK CHUCKER!!!

Getting up it was super fun for both of us. Me from the sidelines, spotting. Sam in "Bruce" Too bad we didn't realize that we had to come back down until we'd already made it up. SO SCARY!

Don't laugh when you see the video: I'm pregnant.

We wouldn't let the kids out at this point. They didn't understand why and were really upset about it.

On Thursday, Uncle Cris, Patrick, Connor and Daddy went on the Kane Creek Trail.

Saturday was the last day of crawling and this obstacle is called The Wedgy. From the picture it doesn't look like much but that ditch is pretty impressive when you are driving through it.

Storytime ritual at bed time. I've grown such an appreciation for reading with my boys. They learn so much through books. They also have started to love reading articles out of The Friend as their "scripture study." What a JOY!!

We forgot the camera charger so we didn't go crazy with taking tons of pictures. One event that was rather significant and undocumented was that we got to spend some time with Sam's oldest sister, Emily and her family. She has three kids and they all get along really well with our rugrats. We spent a few evenings in the pool and Connor just turned blue having so much fun :) Bear is less of a water lover but still didn't want to get out when the time came.

As we were packing up, Bear decided to skydive out of the back window of the Suburban onto the gravel. An ER visit and 2 stitches later, we were finally on the road home.

We decided we'd brave the shorter, steeper route on the way home and boy! were we glad we did. We left around noon and made it to Gramma and Grampa's house in time for a yummy spaghetti dinner!

Deeper Thoughts

Normally my rants on here are relatively shallow in nature....our comings and goings and such, which is good and normal, I suppose. However, for some reason, well, lots of reasons actually, I've been really reflective lately on what my larger responsibilities are in life.

A talk by Julie B Beck was recommended to me and it really has put a few things into perspective for me so I figured I'd share what I got out of it.

The talk is titled, "A Lioness at the Gate." Intriguing, right? Oh it was given at BYU Womens' Conference, if you want to go find it for yourself, which I highly recommend.

Because I can, in no way say it better than she did, here's a quote that I loved,

"...Women are like lionesses at the gate of the home. Whatever happens in that home and family happens because she cares about it and it matters to her. She guards that gate, and things matter to that family if they matter to her."

She goes on to give examples of getting tithing paid, sacrament meeting attended, temple work completed and missions of children served.

As I was thinking about it, I started realizing that she gave some great examples of things that may or may not be important to women/mothers in each home. And with this I started to think about where my focus has been, and where my focus should be.

She goes on to say,

"Sisters, you are each like the lioness at the gate. This means that there has to be some prioritizing. I was taught years ago that when our priorities are out of order, we lose power. If we need power and influence to carry out our mission, then our priorities have to be straight."

I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I have previously found it extremely easy to sit down and in one or two sittings start and finish a novel but found it very difficult to find 10 minutes to sit down and read my scriptures....especially since I became a mom.

She commented on the way that she outlines her priorities and also notes that it will vary for everyone. But she breaks her priorities down like this: The Essential Things, The Necessary Things, The Nice-To-Do Things.

Essential Things as she outlines are things that MUST be taken care of, and if they are not taken care of by me then the blessings of eternal life won't be mine nor will they be my family's.

-Reading the Scriptures

-Prayer

-Sacrament Meeting

-Repentence

-Going to the Temple

-Sharing the Gospel

-Sharing my testimony

-Service

Necessary Things are things that are necessary to create an environment or climate where the Spirit of the Lord would be.

-Homemaking(cleaning, organizing)

-Cooking meals and having them together as a family

-Becoming Self-Reliant

-Getting out of Debt

-Be Happy

-Spending undistracted(word?) time with my children

Nice-To-Do Things are obviously things that are recreational in nature and won't guide us back to our Heavenly Father.

-Quilting

-Crocheting

-Cross-stitching

-Reading

-Facebooking

-Games

Now, this is just my list. Obviously, yours may be different.

The last challenge that she gave REALLY REALLY touched me.

Because I struggle with scripture study, I've been looking for some kind of manual to read along with so that I could really study what I was reading rather than just reading it and waiting for something to jump off the pages at me. You are probably thinking, hello? what about Sunday school manuals? Well, I wanted something a little bit more than that, I guess I can't explain what exactly I wanted.

Anyway, I feel like the Lord was speaking directly to me when she says this,

"I have a little exercise for those of you who want something specific to do in your scripture study. Get a new little copy of the Book of Mormon. In the front of it, open to a blank page and write three questions: Who am I? What are my responsibilities in the house of Israel? How do I fulfill my responsibilities? As you read and study, you will find some blank pages in the back. You can add Post-It notes if you like. Start writing your answers in the back as you read, and you will have a journey of discovery about who you are. It doesn't matter how long this study takes. Take one month, take ten years, and discover who you are. When you finish studying those questions in the Book of Mormon, study them in the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Old Testament. The Lord knows who you are. He knows what your responsibilities are and how you can fulfill them. Power and strength will come to you as you understand who you are in the Lord's kingdom."

I'm filled with gratitude for the things I'm beginning to learn as I start my scripture study with this focus. And I'm grateful for a Heavenly Father who knows my struggles and my strengths, who can guide me when I feel like I'm floundering, and who can humble me when my priorities become misaligned.

I don't know if this made sense to anyone but it feels good to get it out. So thanks for being patient.....or just skipping this entry entirely:)