Its a girl!!! :)

We found out on Friday, March 11th; that we are having another little girl. So our last little one will be a girl! Names.... that will be somewhat of a struggle but we are so excited. Of course Grant said that he would have preferred to wrestle with a little brother in the future but that he could wrestle a little sister just as well and teach her all his tricks.

After we were able to "see" our little one we were thinking about how long we have known about her. When I was 20weeks pregnant with Grant and hooked up to IVs in the hospital we talked about him being the last baby but we immediately felt like there was one more. She is suppose to come to our little family and she is suppose to come now. Amazing! We can't wait to meet this special little girl.

And the escaped convict got caught!

So, I am supposed to be laying low for a couple of days because of the incident on Sunday....hahaha. I had fully intended on doing just that! Promise! Monday: Totally layed low.... layed on the couch... on my right side of course because the left hurt too bad. Grant kept "trying" to sit on my head though, hahaha, its like he knew that would be bad. hahaha. I was a good girl, went and picked up the girls from school and then rested some more.

On Tuesday, the day started out much of the same, only little buddy did not want me to just lay down, he was all done with that mommy. So we played with the things he loves, did some laundry, which felt like quite the hike to the basement and back and then layed down when I could sneakily do so.

Grants balls are in a polka-dot basket in our family room, he loves to dump them out and then throw the basket. Which he did this time, only my head was in the way. Ouch, I tried not to cry so it was one of those laugh/cry combos, little buddy was still throwing his balls and having a blast.

I was talking on the phone to my sister a little bit later and I felt my wound and then looked at my hand and there was new blood. dang it! It hurt, but it wasn't excruciating and I talked to Greg and he said that I probably didnt lose any of my prized staples but he said that he would need to look at it when he got home. I then proceeded to take a shower, which I was petrified to do!!! But it didn't hurt as much as I thought it would and I felt better when I got out.

It was time to go and get the girls from school and while I was in the car lane I very carefully brushed my hair, that did hurt! My original plan was for all of us to go to the basement when we got home and play and clean up the craziness in our play room, Grant loves it down there! But, when the girls got in the car they were so excited that it was "Fun Day Tuesday"! They get out an hour earlier on tuesdays and they dont have any scheduled activities on tuesdays until later so its perfect to go to the library, the park when its warm, or McDs when its cold and mommy just sits while everyone runs like crazy. I thought, sure, why not!!?? All I will do is sit and the girls will chase Grant around and it will be perfect. I can "lay low" at the McDonalds playground!! Right?

As I was laying on the ground and coming to......I woke up to my sweet little buddy giving me a hundred kisses all over my face. Seriously he would not stop. He must have been worried. I heard the girls saying, "She is ok, she is just per-eg-an-ant!!" Then I heard a sweet lady say, "Sweetheart, the ambulance is on its way!" Oh no!! And the McDonalds manager say,"Here is some orange juice and cookies, they always make me feel better when my blood sugar is low." Wow!!!!! So nice! But so, so embarrassing! But in my best slurred-after-passing-out-speech I explained to them that I have low blood pressure and that this happens everyday.......only just ...... not at mcdonalds!

When the EMTs got there, they checked my blood pressure, which was through the roof because I was so stressed. They asked me a ton of questions and gave me a pillow to lay on, which was nice because can you imagine what your face is smushing against on the floor at the McDs playland? They were really really nice and he kept telling me that I needed to lay on my left side but I kept trying to say that I had 8 staples in my head from a fainting episode on sunday. That went over well. I declined a ride on their stretcher and their ambulance but they were not leaving until someone could drive me home. Dang it!! I was caught, I had to call Greg.

Greg arrived like a night in shining armor! You know when you are little and you get sick at school and your mom comes to pick you up and you finally feel like you can cry. Thats just what I did. :( The kids were so excited to see him too. Halle kept on running up to me and saying, Can I run out to the road and wait for Daddy. Um no Halle. Seriously, it felt like I was an escaped convict who was trying to make a run for it and got caught!!!!

So.... apparently I am on official house arrest. Greg called and explained to the needed people that I would not be at all the things I was supposed to do this week. Activity Days tonight, Pinewood Derby tomorrow night... etc. I dont blame him, he cant leave work whenever I have an episode outside of the house!

So, here I am, in very familiar but unwelcomed territory. It makes me sad. I am trying to not get too claustrophobic and am reminding myself that this doesn't have to be for the next few months if I can just behave and lay down when I need to!!! Yes,lay down even when I am at McDonalds (even though I really dont see myself going back there) when the floor is gross and I decide that I will just make a run for it instead... dang it, that trick never works!!!!!

A very, very expensive haircut!

Sunday, March 13th, hahahahahahahaha.

Steph's Version of the story:
Church starts at 10:00am
7am: Grant awakens, he is mucho hungry and needs his oatmeal 15 minutes ago... seriously where is the food? and oops, I slept in, nice, my phone alarm was on vibrate!!. Because intead of being 7, its 8, yup, we are "springing forward!" Baiby is still in pajamas with oatmeal still smashed on said pajamas.
8:30 wake up girls and get them downstairs to eat and then start on their hair and get church bags ready.
9:00 hop in the shower and start on my own hair...thank fully, hair is behaving, gotta love good hair days.... beginning to feel a little.... sickish. Which is completly normal by the way!
9:30 lay down for a sec, dont want to pass out like I do every sunday morning!!! check on Greg who is sick with a yucky fever and cough and sore throat in bed.. poor guy, i get to take care of him for a change!
9:45 yikes, 15 min till church starts..... baby, still has smashed oatmeal pajamas on and now has the addition of a poopy diaper, dang it. Still feeling a little sick...ish. I am good though, gotta get some pictures for sharing time for primary today, just real quick of course.I will just stand in the kitchen next to my dishwasher and the fridge and lots of kitchen cabinets and other hard objects because that is always a good idea when I am feeling... sick...ish. Maybe I should lay down.... hmm..
9:50 Yuck, I think... I will ....go and lay...................................................................................

dang it!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tay and Halle's version:
8:45am: Our hair is so pretty! Mommy curled it! so cute! Lets go do hand stands in the family room and jump on the couches! Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do you think mommy will notice if we turn on the t.v.?
9:30am: So i think i will bring my bouncing, singing bunny to church, and some stickers, and crayons, all the crayons we own in fact, and some pop tarts, and..... hmm.... its not fitting in my church bag.
9:50: "We were jumping on the couch and then we heard the loudest bang ever!!! We knew it was mommy because she is so big and loud when she faints!"
9:51: We run upstairs to go and get daddy and get mommy a trash can because she is throwing up. gross. She is bleeding and cracked her head open!!!!
9:56 Mommy is crying like a little girl, like this, "wah,wah, wah", then Daddy says that stinky Grant and us can watch veggie tales!!! yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Fun times huh!
Sorry for the very long background story! I totally fainted (which is normal) and threw up (normal again) but hit my head on something very hard (which is a given when you are standing right next to hard things but thankfully has never happened like this before), and actually cut my head open. I feel really bad for Greg who had to come down and find me with a little pool of blood and still passed out. Not fun. After assessing the damage he decided that we better head to the emergency room to be safe.
When I woke up this time i could tell that I had been out for a little longer than normal because Greg was already there... and there was a bloody pillow under my head and the throw up had been cleaned up already. Gory details. gross, so sorry!
We decided that we better head to church first and see if we could drop off the kids to primary, along with my sharing time lesson. (hahaha) On the way there, Tay said, "Mommy, I did not know that grown ups cried when they got hurt."

Did you know, that if you walk into the ER in your "sunday best" with a big pregnant belly and blood on your, "sunday best" and a bloody rag on your head... that you do not have to wait your turn and that you will get in to see the dr. super fast!!! :) good things to know!

After some needles in the head to numb the pain, they "sprayed" some of the blood out and then gave me a nice little trim around the cut, the hair there is about a 1/4 long... or so Greg tells me. I probably just recieved the most expensive hair cut I have ever had... I probably wont be going back to that hairstylist again!! (hopefully not anyway). Then the Dr. gave me 8 staples in my head, he said the cut was pretty deep and was about 2" long. wow.

I cannot end this post without first thanking my Heavenly Father for some tender mercies in all seriousness!!!

*It is amazing to me that this is my 4th pregnancy and that this is the first time I have ever had a major head trauma after ..... I dont know, hundreds of times that I have passed out!
*This happened on a sunday morning, when the girls were around and I wasn't alone with just Grant!
*Greg was home when this happened! He was supposed to be at his early morning church meetings, instead he was here!
*I felt so much peace and love from my Heavenly Father before we left for the hospital and knew that baby and I were going to be fine.
*I was feeling a lot of swelling and pressure on the left side of my head and then I recieved a blessing (a special prayer) from Greg before we left for the hospital... that pressure feeling went away. When we were at the hospital the Dr. said that if I was having any swelling problems that it would mean that I had internal bleeding but that since I didn't that I was ok! Definitly not just a coincidence!!!!!!


I am supposed to lay low for a couple of days and rest... so I will do my best at that. My hemaglobin was 10.9 and I guess its suppose to be more around 12 so i need to find a way to increase my iron. I will do my best at that too.

Long winded again. haha. Oh, and the dark hair, totally came in handy because i couldn't wash my hair for a couple of days and you couldn't even see the dried blood all over. hahaha. another blessing. :)
PS. Halle also said that, "this is the best most funnest sunday ever!! We got to watch movies all day!!!"

February Picture Updates

Feb 21st: Halle and I having some "mommy-time" up on her bunk bed... and yes... we laughed really hard at mommy climbing up onto the bunk bed. hahahahaha.

Feb 17/18th: This picture was taken at the Louisville, KY Temple. We were supposed to go here on his birthday weekend but he was so sick with strep throat so his Mom so graciously offered to watch the kids the following weekend, which was the 17th/18th instead and we were able to drop the kids off for the night and we got a hotel and then went to the temple on sat morning. I made it through the whole session which is a first for me in a pregnancy!! :) It was sooo good to have some time together! Thanks so much Debbie and Bill for watching the crazies!

Feb 18th:I was able to go on a field trip with Tay's class to the musuem and got some cute pics of her with her friends! This is Tay with her "BFFL", Kim. They have a secret handshake and everything! :)

Oh, spring, please come soon, these "teaser" days we have been having are sooo very welcomed! Everyone is in a better mood when we get outside to play. AKA, not as much fighting.

The following pics wer taken outside on a somewhat warmish feb day, just some fun that was much needed. And yes, this is the "what use to be black hair but then chilled out to a brown after a few washes" hair. hahahahaha.

I do know that the following picture is rediculous and silly and that I do not in fact look like Zoolander but look at that babies hair! I couldn't resist posting it. hahahaha.

Valentines Day

We had so much fun celebrating this fun day. I felt great so Grant and I dropped off some treats for the girls at school and then when everyone got home we had "heart shaped" turkey burgers and played a few games, (V-Day Bingo and a conversation heart candy game) really simple but so fun.

Eww, does not look appatizing at all, but they all loved it. :)

My Valentines. So very awesome.

Seriously!? So cute! And we get another Ingram!!!!! 4 kids, so insanly crazy and busy but I am sure..... it will be so awesome!

Grant is getting so big and so silly

This little guy is so fun and so busy! He LOVES to play with his blocks and balls!!

I do have to say that I am quite impressed with the little towers that he puts together. :)

Ok, this is the perfect example of the little faces that he has been making when i pull out the camera. hahahaha. So hilarious! I wonder if he thinks that is what we look like when we "smile" for the camera. :)

He was "hiding" on the stairs but staring right at me through the railing. :)

Happy Birthday My Love! Feb 11th

Greg came down with strep throat on his actual birthday which was quite sad because we had some fun surprise plans but we just postponed them for the next weekend and had a "fun" weekend at home instead. The following pictures are out of order but here is what we did to celebrate. :)
Fri, Feb 11th- picked up some antibiotics for Dr. Ingram that he reluctlantly decided he might need. haha. Then we watched Dispicable Me (love that movie!!) and had pizza and he opened some presents.
Sun, Feb 13th- we made him his favorite dinner which is homemade lazagna and we made a yummy cake for him. This cake has lots of names and the girls were asking us what it was called and we started out saying that it was called,"Better than Kissing Cake" and that didn't stick too well with them and so we kept on trying new names for it. Here is how the conversation went,
Tay: So, why is it called better than kisses cake?
Greg: Well, because some people think that this cake is better than getting kisses from someone you love.... (Greg and I sat snickering to ourselves of course).
Tay: hmm, lets think of another name.
Greg: How about NICMO cake. hahahaha. heeeheehee. (We thought that was funny.)
Tay: What is Nicmo?
Greg: ???? um. Non Commital cake. (more laughs from greg and I)
Tay: yeah! i like that! I am going to tell my teacher we had non-commitititiall cake. (no more laughing from greg and i!)
Me: How about another name
Halle: How about the "Kiss Me Cake"
We all decided that that was the very best name and the term non commital has been dropped from anyones vocabulary. hahaha. ??


They sure do love their Daddy!! Even when he is sick he lets them climb all over him. :) The face that Grant is making is his new "mommy has the camera our and she said to smile" face. It is hilarious! We love it!

That would be the gangster sign for 33. In case you were wondering!!!

This would be the "kiss me cake" as discussed above.

Some major wishes going on before the candles are blown out. haha.

Everyone into Dispicable Me, including the little guy. He loves pizza movie night. :) as we all do!

What it must feel/look like to be 33!!!!

***My Greg. I love you!! You are truly amazing and I am so honored to be called your wife and friend! Happy Birthday!

She's here!!!!

I just spoke to her. It's 1:30am here in my land.... Its 11:30pm in Utah where her plane has just landed after 30 hrs of flying.

Megan Dustin has been serving a mission for our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, for more on our beliefs go to www.mormon.org ) in the Philippines for 1.5 yrs... serving the people there and sharing some of that amazing light that she has inside of her and sharing her knowledge of how that light comes from Jesus Christ! Amazing!!!

I wasn't able to sleep (nothing new there.. haha) and had been texting Bridget in hopes that I might get a little play by play of her walking off the plane. And then, my phone silently rang while I was folding laundry in my family room and I heard her voice for the first time since September of 2009. :) She has a little accent, her voice kind of trails up at the end of her words. Cute! Proof of speaking another language for a long, long time. She sounded so good and happy, of course! I of course couldn't speak, just some tears and choking going on there but I am sure she thought I was just really sleepy.

Perhaps I can sleep now! Although I am almost finished with this basket of laundry..... so I will finish that up and then try to sleep. :)

But really? Can it get any more comforting than knowing that someone you love so much is back in this beautiful America? I have missed her so much. She is gorgeous! Happy! So kind, A true desciple of Jesus Christ and now....she is home. :)

Thanks for the call Megs!
(If you want to read about Megan's mission experiences, my mom has diligently updated it with her emails and also my brother, Josh's mission emails from Argentina..... They are sooooo inspiring and awesome! The blog is http://www.dustinmissionaries.blogspot.com/

(Now..... to wait for Joshua to get home from his mission!)

Confessions of an antisocialite

Hi, my name is Stephanie and I am an antisocial chic.

Now, why is it that an antisocial person would have the audacity to openly share such information on a blog?

That is a good question.

I have a few theories on my personal craziness:

1. admitting something sometimes helps you move beyond an issue.... not always though.
2. admitting something sometimes helps solidify and justify a certain way you behave... good or bad.
3. hmm. thats all I've got right now.

I have the small inclination that I just might need to change my antisocial ways. Not completley mind you, because that just might be catastrophic to my soul. But the inspiration is there none the less.

The inspiration is Grant. Yes it has taken my 3rd child, and 4th pregnancy-induced-permission-to -be-antisocialness.........to make me see that although I may be just fine moving through life, all protected and emotionally safe and very comfortable in my own little reality.... I may need to be... (gulp) social-ish to help him... them survive.

He is literally screaming to leave the house and play. In the morning when everyone is rushing around to get ready for school/work... he is madly running around trying to find his little shoes and coat so that he can be ready too. Breaks my heart!

Today, I did something crazy.......... I went to the gym. Why? Because I knew that he could play and that other little kids would be in there for him to have some interaction with... and because I knew that for an antisocial person I could "easily" go..... and walk on a treadmill (???) and possible lay down on a public couch (???) and take a shower (?) and give little buddy some time to play.

It was a success. I did all 3 of the things listed above plus a trip to the bathroom of course. He had so much fun! hahaha. When we drove into the garage he wasn't screaming the way he has been lately. Interesting. Its almost like............ the need for interacting with other human beings is a basic level need to survive. hhhhmmmmmm. shocking.

While I was there a really sweet mom invited me to a playgroup where Grant could play and I could.... socialize with other moms. I broke out into a cold sweat panic and lied through my teethy smile that,"That sounds really fun, we would both love that! If I am feeling ok I will try and make it." I am a strange, strange chic. I am ok with that but really...?? In my brain I think I am better off on a treadmill in my little "condition" then sitting on a chair surrounded by other moms.... strange. Dont get me wrong! I admire other mothers to no end, I watch and try to learn from all of their wonderfulness.... but to "socialize"...... its like my brain tries to click backwards to find a way out, my body freezes, and my spirit says that I should move forward. strange. haha.

Hmmm, what should I do with this new-found, "dang-it, I always knew I was weird and was ok with it but I probably need to change to help my children be a little healthier than I am....." ? Follow me? hahahahahahaha.

Perhaps...(gulp) its time for me to stretch out my chalk-lined boundaries I have set for myself a few inches. 3 inches to be exact.

Maybe I should go to the playgroup tomorrow at 9:30am. (gulp)

Perhaps I shall just stretch out my chalk line an inch.... just one.

Awareness..... it truly is the great motivator.... there is kind of no going back. Especially when improving one's self is for your chidren's sake.

dang it!!!