Brotherly Love

Kade and Gavin are finally starting to play well together. Gavin lights up when he sees Kade and tries to imitate everything he does. He makes car noises like Kade, dances, claps, yells, throws balls, all like Kade. And Kade loves when Gavin copies him. Sure, he still tries to shove him or body slam him on the couch when I am not looking, but all in all, I think they are going to be good friends. Plus I am just happy that there is somebody else to occupy him besides me!!!!

camping out

cooking up something

not so happy here, he must of whacked him with his paper airplane when I wasn't looking!

a bit confused...

Following Kristi's lead I asked Kaden, "who is the best Mommy in the whole wide world?"

His response (no, not Robyn) : DADDY!

Just great. Not quite kiddo, maybe you'lle get it right next time :)

BABY GILLARD IS HERE!!!!!

Nameless baby Gillard has arrived! He was born @ 12 am this morning, August 13th, weighing 6 lbs. 7 oz. and 20 inches long!

Cathy's Doctor decided it would be best if he was induced yesterday afternoon so she got her stuff and headed to the hospital. She arrived at the hospital around 5:30 and they started her pitosin drip at about 7:30. I arrived around 9pm and she was looking good as ever. The contractions were still pretty mild. They broke her water at about 10 pm and her contractions quickly got stronger and faster. By 10:30 she was in a lot of pain and she got her epidural at about 10:45. By 11:00 she was laughing and joking with the nurse again!

The nurse came in and checked her at about 11:30ish and she had gone from a 5 to a 10 dilation in less than an hour. She fought the urge to push until the doctor arrived. We left the room at 11:50 and with about 3 or 4 pushes he was born!!!!

She looks glorious, had a very smooth delivery and is feeling very good. Mike is in heaven and is such a pround papa. He has Mikes nose and chin and cute blonde hair!

The happy couple awaiting the arrival of their precious boy

Baby Gillard

Stretching out

Mom and baby (It should be illegal to look this good after having a baby!)

What a proud Daddy :)

He is so tiny in my arms

What a beautiful family!

Precious

A weekend full of parties!

What a busy weekend! Saturday was my sister Robyn's baby shower, and my mom and I hosted about 25 people who all came to help celebrate the coming boy or girl (we don't know the sex). She is expecting her first child in just about a month and I am so excited for her and her hubby. She is an awesome Aunt to my boys and I can't wait to spoil her little baby. Everything went well and she looks wonderful!

the beautiful mom-to-be

Mom and her girls
Robyn opening one of her gifts....doesn't she look great!
Robyn's special cake

Then Sunday was Gavin's 1st Birthday party! We had wonderful family and friends come help us celbrate. Gavin got lots of fun toys and cute clothes, and despite the heat and our small little house, I think everyone had a good time.

Birthday boy and Grandma
Uncle Jim and Aunt Robyn, the parents-to-be
Love birds, little Anna was born just one day after Chunker
Addy in her pretty dress
I

where's the cake?

Miss Gracie The kids played outside without complaint of how hot it was while us parent's watched comfortably inside! Soon we broke out the water balloons and after that came the hose. The kids were soaked but they loved it!

Mia and Kade

Loading up the water balloons

Sprinkler fun

A soaked cousin Jamie

Then it was present time. Gavin wasn't super into it, plus he wasn't opening presents fast enough for Kade so Kade "helped" The first present had a ball in it and he wasn't much interested after that anyway!

Can you find Gavin...look under the orange tissue paper!

Lastly, it was cake time!!! My friend Hilary made this adorable Monkey cake, along with my sister's Shower cake. She is very talented and if you ever need a cake you should check her out. Gavin got it all to himself, although we did steal some bites. We had cupcakes for everyone else. Gavin loved it!

What a chunky monkey!!!

Happy Birthday Chunky Monkey!!!!

I am taking a break from vacation talk to wish my lil monkey a very happy birthday. You are 1!

For those of you who do not know his stats, Gavin Truth Anderson was born August 6, 2007 at 10:33 am. He was forced out of me one week past his due date, I guess he was pretty comfortable in there:) It took about 35 minutes of the hardest pushing ever to get that butterball out. I always new he was big when he was in my belly but we didn't know he was gigantic until he made his way into the world at a whopping 10 lbs, 2 oz and 22 inches long! I know, I know, I rock:) I am allowed to be proud of myself for that!


Here is a look back to that glorious day:





Well Gavin, it has been a crazy year. You were born starving and I still have trouble keeping up with your appetite! You had so many little idiosecrencies (sp??) that your brother didn't have. You definately gave me a run for my money, and there were a lot more tears in the beginning because I just didn't know what to do to make you happy. But I have come to figure out that you were just born ahead of your time. I think you wanted eat people food and crawl and walk and you didn't like that newborn stage. Well, you are definately past that stage now, and much happier. You weigh 25 lbs. at the ripe age of one, and though you are not walking yet, you can crawl like a son of a gun.

And boy are you smart! You are too smart for your own good, and too cute which makes a dangerous combination. I love the smile you give me when I come into your room in the morning. I love when you give slobber kisses and high fives. Your big blue eyes melt my heart, and your 3 1/2 teeth make me laugh out loud.



Happy birthday Gorgeous, Chunky Monkey, Gav, lil earthquake, Chunker Monker, brother......Baby Gavin! I love you :)

CA trip, day 1& 2

Ok, ok...I know I said I was going to work backwards, but the only pics I have on my camera were from the first two days so instead we are starting from the drive up, that's a good place to start I think.

We left about 3 in the afternoon but after gas and food pit stops it was 4 pm before we really left the West Valley. Gavin decided it would be the day to try out screaming on us and see how we dealt with it. We did not deal with it well. Note to self, yelling back does not work, it only teaches the other son to yell in response too. Needless to say we had quite the ride. I was able to capture one peaceful moment when Gavin finally stopped yelling long enough nap....don't let that sweet face fool you!

Trying to shut him up with food!

Finally asleep:)

Among the many side of the road pee breaks ( for Kade, not for us!) also came a poop break. Since we didn't want to do that on the side of the road, we stopped at a Burger King, and we stumbled on to Jurassic Park! This cool B.K. had a bunch of life sized Dinosaurs. I think they were slides but they were closed so we just looked instead. Kade thought they were so cool and could not stop talking about them!

I totally forgot about the old school Burger King Hats!
Kade punching the Dinosaur

Look at these two cuties. Gavin looks too big to be sitting on his lap though!

DAY 2

After a late arrival the night before, we spent the next day at the beach for some much needed down time. It was absolutely gorgeous weather. I love the beach, and I especially love not being in AZ! We were walking distance from the beach but we drove up to the pier where there was a little more stuff to do.

This was our home away from home for the week!

Gavin didn't like the sand or the water...poor kid!

That's better, mom has you now!

I love this pic of the two of them!

A beautiful self protrait...hey, where is the rest of me??

me and Fun Kristi :)

He is flexing his muscles for all the girls!

All in all, a good day at the beach!!!

Good vacation -- bad ending....

So it has been a while since i blogged because we were out of town!!! We left last Saturday for Oceanside and vacationed with Fun Kristi family for 6 days. The trip was fun and it was so nice to be outside without breaking a sweat! It was a little crazy with 5 kids running around but we had lots of alcohol :) Seriously, we had a good time, and I will blog about each day working backwards, so I am going to start with our last day, Day 6.

We had to check out of the house we rented by 11am so Joel and I thought it might be fun to go down to La Jolla on the way home and get one last day at the beach and tird the kids out for the ride home. It was a beautiful day and we were successful at tiring the kids out and we were on the road by 2:30 and the kids were zonked. We had to stop to let Kade go pee ( in the rocks, of course) and Gavin woke up but even went back to sleep! Kade went back to sleep too. We were enjoying a quiet ride home, which was a nice change from the ride over, when about 40 miles outside of Yuma, we feel a big bump and everyone wakes up and Joel pulls over to see what happened. We Had blown half the tread off of our back tire!! Now the kids are awake, we are back in the heat, and Joel has to change a tire in 115 degrees. That detour took us about 45 minutes so when we finally got back on the road we had two stir crazy kids. Oh yeah, and Gavin has learned to scream at the top of his lungs and it is ear piercing. We got to Yuma around 6 and decided to stop for dinner and let the kids out so they could run off some energy.

We ate at Applebee's and finished up close to 7pm, thinking "good, it is close to bed time and the kids will fall asleep on the ride home." We walk out to the car to find our front tire completely FLAT!! Are you kidding me? Our spare is already on the back tire and it is 7 o'clock at night. So we go fill it up with air and go by some fix-a-flat. It seemed to be kind of working, but we didn't know how long it would hold and we were still 160 miles from home. We are driving home praying that we don't go off the road if the tire finally gives out, Gavin is crying and screaming and doesn't want to be in the car seat anymore, and the batteries die in our dvd player that Kade is watching. Seriously! I guess it does always happen in 3's right?

We are trying to make it to Gila Bend and we have to stop about 15 miles before hand to change a diaper and Joel checks the tire to find that it is halfway flat again and oozing! So we race to Gila Bend and thankfully we make it and find a tire shop. They take our tire off and we find that the nail has fallen out and the fix-a-flat has sealed the hole. They fill it with air and it doesn't seem to be leaking. Finally, somewhat of a happy ending to our day.

We finally made it home around 11pm. That's right, it took us more than 8 hours to complete a 4-5 hour trip. Thank God we made it home safely. Of course, then I had to go spend $400 on new tires....if this is the price of going on vacation, I won't go anymore!!

Oh yeah, and I can't show you any pics because my camera got sand in it and is now broken!!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!