Regarding Henry

It's a BOY!

Our little dude came unexpectedly early Monday morning. I was very confident that we would induce on the 28th. One of our favorite memories to talk about was how extremely confident our friend was about me inducing on the 28th. He wasn't going to put his vote in until later. Who knew that as we were having this discussion he was already disqualified from the game. :) I have never gone into labor on my own so I was a little apprehensive when I woke up at 2:40 with contractions about 6 minutes apart. I kept track of the contractions and they kept getting stronger and a little closer together. Willie woke up about 45 minutes after me and suggested that we go to the hospital. I thought that some water would help the contractions go away. Not so. It was good that Willie called the doctor and decided to go. We are very extremely grateful for Emily who woke up really early to come watch our boys. Also thanks to Jake who took care of their kids. Thanks for watching our boys. We made it to the hospital just after 4:00. Contractions were very strong when I was in the hospital and I requested my epidural right away. I highly enjoyed the decrease in pain once I had the epidural in. I realize that I have no tolerance for any kind of pain.

(Now Willie is writing.) As Krista was being dealt her anesthetics, I paid close attention. I've always thought it was cool. But this time, my empty stomach wasn't ready for it. I nearly passed out. I heard a nurse call over the intercom for some juice. Imagine my surprise when she gave it to me and told me to lay down before I blacked out!

A couple hours, a nap for both of us, followed by another near blackout from me, and our beautiful baby boy popped right out. Birth time was 8:50 am. We named him Henry T. The "T" stands for two of his great grandfathers (Thede and Ted), and also carries on a little naming tradition on my side. My Dad's middle name is D., mine is K., and Henry's is T.


A small note about this kid: the other two took at least a few hours to pee on me, but this kid caught me unaware a mere 4 minutes after he was born. I was leaning in to let him hold my finger and whamo!


Here are Krista and I shortly after Henry was born.

I brought Parker and Lincoln up later. They love their baby brother.


And here is our first 5-person family photo.

Krista had a photo shoot with Henry the next day. Here are two of our favorites.


And for those who care about statistics, Henry was 7 lbs. 11 oz., 20" long, and came right on his due date. Our doctor said only 1 in 20 babies comes on the due date, which seemed a little low to me. I think it's probably 1 in 18.

Oh yes, and the WINNER of the baby guessing contest: Andi Fry. Total number of contestants: 20, total number disqualified: 9. Winner if no one was disqualified: still Andi. So we'll be nice this time and not disqualify anyone. Honorable mention should be given to John, Mike and Cidne, Camille, Brady, and Lindy. Brady actually guessed the name, but got hammered on the birth time and weight categories.

And here is one little video of our little Henry. Thanks to everyone for their prayers, best wishes, watching our kids, feeding us food, and everything else. We love you all SO MUCH!

Pumpkin Patch.

We visited Berry Patch Farms with some friends. We don't really have great pictures of everyone so I stuck to our family and the pumpkins. This is a place we visited two years ago so it was before Lincoln came. There were many pumpkins to choose from but we went home with the $1 mini pumpkins.
This is a tractor that we took Parker's picture on the last time we visited. The tractor is a big hit for the kids and the parents love the photo-op.I had to have my picture with my boys. This is the last one before the baby comes.
Me and Parker.
Daddy and Lincoln.
A picture of Willie and myself. It doesn't happen very often and if you notice Lincoln still managed to get into the picture. :)
Our friend John was into building pumpkin castles and Lincoln took the opportunity to climb as high as he could.

I like this picture because it shows some cotton plants. It's kind of fun to see the plant cotton comes from.
Parker was describing something very serious. I can imagine him saying "Well..."

On the wagon ride out to the pumpkin patch.

Our fall photos of the boys.

There was a small playground. The slide was old school (metal), you don't find that anywhere anymore.
It was a beautiful day to go out to the farm. We had a great time and enjoyed being with our friends.

Okay, It's Game Time

Alrighty. For those seasoned readers and those who have followed since the birth of our last child you may know what this is about. Some friends of ours did this little game during their pregnancies and we did it with Lincoln. I know that it's getting closer to the due date but hey, that increases your chances of winning right? The general idea of the game is that you make a complete guess of the categories provided and based on a point system the winner will receive a prize. Our last winner was Aunt Rachel.
The categories are; Name, Weight, Length, Day, and Time (be sure to say either am or pm).
The rules; get your guess in 24 hours before the boy is born, no more than one guess per name, no changing guesses.
Who can participate? Anyone, even your little ones if you want an extra guess, but if they win they get the prize.
Previous pregnancy facts to help in your guessing; Parker was induced a week early (we were moving across country). Lincoln was induced exactly a week after his due date. Once I was induced the delivery process was fairly quick 3-4 hours.
FYI. My due date is October 25 (yeah Grandma Pettigrew). My parents are visiting on the 28th and we hope to induce that day if he hasn't come yet. The doctors won't induce unless "I'm ready."
That's all for now. Good luck to all the contestants out there.

Conference Highlights.

In the past year I have missed the first few speakers from the Saturday morning session of General Conference due to shopping. I made the effort to be home to hear from those speakers this time. We were sad to miss the words of President Monson because of technical errors. I enjoyed hearing from Elder Holland (he is becoming a favorite of mine). He told a story of a sister who was a 'helper.' She never held a leadership calling but she was always called to be the helper. I feel like I could be her, always a helper. I enjoyed talks on following the prophet, doing visiting teaching, listening to the Holy Ghost and many more. I wish I could have listened to the whole of Conference but we had some distractions. We put up a tent (King Benjamin) in hopes that the kids would have fun listening to our prophet in their tent. We printed activities for the boys to do while we listened. I think that perhaps next time we should take them outside and play before conference so that they can be a little more reverent during the sessions. We did try to get the boys to listen to parts of conference by giving them stickers when they heard certain words such as temple, prophet, Jesus Christ, families, Holy Ghost, etc. I am grateful to have the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life. I love to hear from our living Prophet, President Monson. I am grateful for my family, I love them very much. I am grateful for the examples of friends and family who have molded me into the person I am today. I wish I could be better. Conference is a great time to reevaluate my life and the decisions I've been making. Who needs the New Year when you can make new goals every six months?

Field Trip

For the last few months Parker has been doing Joy School. A few of us moms get together with our kids, who are all about the same age, and we teach them things we think they need to know before they really start school. We take turns each week teaching these wonderful three year old kids. This month we have been learning about different jobs or occupations. On the list we enjoyed Engineers (we missed this one but pretty much all of the fathers of the children are in Engineering school), Professional Athletes, Bakers, and Archeologists/Paleontologists. So for the end of the month we planned to visit Mayfield Dairy to find out more about Dairy Farmers, plus who could pass up the ice cream. We had a great time on our little field trip.
Here are a few picture from our week when we learned about Professional Athletes.Here is the joy school huddle.Can you get any cooler than this?The following are from our Mayfield Dairy trip.Mayfield Dairy gives free tours of the factory. We were all very excited to see how the milk was processed. We watched a 10 minute video showing how the ice cream is made and the equipment they use at the factory. At the end of the video we were all given hairnets so we could go on the tour. Parker was a sport to wear his but we didn't get to go on the tour because Lincoln refused. Who can blame him, he really dislikes to wear hats unless it's completely for play (ie. fireman hat or John Deere hat). Josh was another child who decided not to wear a hairnet. We still love them even though they wouldn't fashion the cute hairnet. This was from a lesson on how pumpkins grow. The next field trip will be to a pumpkin patch.