The Best Christmas Present Ever

I took Michael to Children's Hospital early on Thursday morning for his scheduled MRI.  It's hard to describe the feelings of anxiety whenever we take him in for an MRI.  "Scanxiety" is how many of us refer to it in the cancer community.  No matter how well or poorly they are feeling, you just never know what the results of the scan will be until until the oncologist walks in with the news.

In Michael's case, we are so grateful to report that his scan was clean!!!  Still no sign of his cancer returning over one year after his treatments were completed and two years after he was diagnosed.  At this Christmas time that was absolutely the best gift we could have received.  Not only that, but his scans will now be every 6 months instead of every 3-4 months.  Michael never will be completely out of the woods in terms of being at risk for a cancer recurrence.  He will need to have periodic MRIs for the rest of his life.  The first 5 years are particularly critical.  But as the time required between MRIs increases, so do his chances of long-term survival.

Hooray for a clean scan!!!

After the scan Michael had a hearing test.  The radiation damage increases his chances of hearing loss, so they want to periodically check his hearing.  It's interesting how they check the hearing of a 2-year old who has an incredibly short attention span.  Michael wore a set of headphones and sat on my lap in a sound booth.  One sound technician sat outside the booth and generated interesting sounds in his ears at different volumes and pitches.  Another technician sat in front of us and helped train him to look in the direction of where the sound came from.  Whenever he did, a toy on the wall would light up and make sounds and we would cheer for him.  Fortunately his hearing tested well within the normal range.  Another bit of good news for the day!

Liz threw out her back during the week and couldn't walk for a few days.  One of the days was Thursday when I was at Children's with Michael and couldn't help her.  We are fortunate to have a great visiting teacher and friends who helped with meals, running errands, and taking care of kids for a few days so that Liz could mend.

At this Christmas season we are so grateful for our wonderful family and friends.  We're especially grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ who has carried our burdens and continues to help us carry them as we walk this road called life.

MRI and IFSP

Michael has his next MRI on Thursday morning.  We're trying hard not to think too much about it, and hope and pray for another clean scan.

He also had his IFSP last week, which is basically when his therapists meet together to check on his progress and set some new goals.  His progress is very slow, particularly when it comes to speech, so we're rethinking our strategy.  He's working with two speech therapists now, and we're considering adding a third to help us with sign language.  He does most of his communication with us through signs that he has learned by watching Signing Time videos.  He appears to have so much he wants to tell us, but with his lack of coordination and our limited knowledge of sign language, it's really hard for us to know what he's saying.  We're hoping if we can get someone to help us understand Michael better, it will be huge breakthrough for us. 

We still plan on continuing with our other speech therapists, but we're having a terrible time getting insurance to reimburse us for the one in Denver.  We've paid thousands of dollars out of pocket for it so far and we've been fighting our insurance over it for months, but no luck so far.  We have an advocate through my work that we hope will help, but so far they're getting the run-around as well.  It's been an incredibly frustrating process.  We've temporarily suspended our weekly Denver visits until we can come to some sort of resolution.

There's a respite care facility in town that offers free babysitting for children with special needs and their siblings about once a month to give parents a break.  We decided to give it a try on Saturday, so we dropped the four oldest off for the afternoon.  Each of the kids gets a buddy, who is a volunteer assigned to be with them at the center.  They do crafts, play in the gym, make yummy snacks, and this time they even received a visit from Santa Claus!  Whitney told me afterwards she didn't think this was the real Santa Claus since his beard kept falling off.  Sarah said that when Santa asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she responded that she hasn't decided yet.  Santa gave her this look and told her, "You're running out of time, you'd better decide quick!"

The kids also said that some friends at church came to sing some Christmas carols while they were there.  We remembered seeing an announcement the Sunday before at church about seeking volunteers to sing carols at the respite center, but didn't put two and two together until our children told us about the visit.  They were nervous about going to the center and not knowing anybody, so we're glad they ended up seeing some familiar faces.

It was really eye-opening seeing some of the other children with their challenges at the respite facility.  Some of them have some serious challenges that make us grateful for the challenges we have with Michael.  At the same time, it dawned on us that there are probably people who think the same thing about us.  Some days it still hits us that having a child with special needs is our reality now.  We always thought it was the sort of thing that happened to other families, and never dreamed it would some day happen to us.  We're so grateful for our Michael, though, and wouldn't trade him for anything.  We're also so grateful we don't have to face these challenges alone.

Here are a few pictures from this last week:

Brooklyn warmed up nicely to the Wheeler grandparents last weekend and looked so cute sitting in her Bumbo and holding onto Grandma's finger.

We helped Grandpa celebrate his birthday while he was out here.  One of his favorite pastimes is water-skiing, so we decorated a water-skiing cake for him.

Whitney has to practice writing out her spelling words for school each week.  This week she got a little creative and drew pictures to go along with her words.

I got a particular kick out of the picture of her chicken, who apparently is either craving KFC or is thinking, "When I grow up I want to be a drumstick!"

Sarah's Baptism

Our 8-year old Sarah was baptized yesterday!  What a wonderful day for our family!  Both the Wheeler and Bellamy grandparents braved sub-zero temperatures and icy roads to be here.  We felt the love of our other family members who wished they could be here, too.  We appreciate the family, friends, neighbors, and even Sarah's piano teacher who came to support us on this special day.

The program began with Grandpa Bellamy teaching about the importance of baptism, after which I had the wonderful privilege of baptizing Sarah with her two Grandfathers standing as witnesses.  The water was warm, and Sarah just beamed as we gave each other a big hug.  As we changed into dry clothes they showed some short video clips: "I am a Child of God", "Things that Matter Most", and "Families Can Be Together Forever".

We had originally planned on having a special musical number sung by our children and their cousins.  Since the weather prevented the cousins from being able to attend Sarah's baptism, our Bailey friends (who are practically like cousins) joined Whitney and Spencer in singing a primary song about baptism.  It was the cutest thing ever seeing five young children singing so sweetly. 

Grandma Wheeler followed by teaching about the Holy Ghost.  She shared experiences our family has had with the Holy Ghost and asked us if we wanted to know what the Holy Ghost looks like.  Of course we all did, so she shared with us a children's book about the Holy Ghost.  The book explains that although we don't know what Holy Ghost looks like, we feel his presence like a warm blanket wrapped around us.  She then presented Sarah with the book and a warm blanket. 

After this, her Grandfathers and a few close family friends who hold the Priesthood joined me in giving Sarah a special blessing where she was confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and received the Holy Ghost.  Lastly, our bishop offered some kind words and officially welcomed Sarah as a member of the church.

Following the baptism service we invited those who attended to a light dinner and refreshments in our home.  We are so grateful for wonderful family and friends who made it such a special day!

A Memorable Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving our plan was to drive out to Utah on Wednesday to visit Liz's family.  However, last Sunday Michael was throwing up and had a fever, and the eye he had surgery on looked terrible.  His eye was dark red and parts of his eyeball were really swollen around the surgery site.  On Monday his eye looked even worse, so Liz took him in to see his surgeon.  Dr. Arnold determined that Michael had an eye infection, but the infection was unrelated to his fever and throwing up, so it was likely he had the stomach flu as well.  Our poor little boy!  We put Michael on antibiotics and tried to come up with a backup plan in case driving out to Utah on Wednesday wasn't going to be an option.  Fortunately, on Wednesday morning Michael seemed to be on the mend, so we quickly packed up and made the trip.

On Thursday before the big Thanksgiving meal, Liz's sister Carrie and I took our three oldest kids and some of their cousins to see "Frozen" in the theater.  Whitney loved it so much she declared she wants us to rent it next August to show at her birthday party.  The Thanksgiving feast was absolutely amazing, and it was great having the entire Bellamy family together for it.  The prep and the cleanup took an incredible amount of work; I spent most of the day taking care of kids so that Liz could help out in the kitchen.

We were worried about the sleeping arrangements for this trip since there would be seven of us sharing two bedrooms, with Brooklyn and Michael being particularly terrible sleepers.  Sure enough, Wednesday night was a rough night with Brooklyn and Michael waking up frequently during the night. But Thursday night took the cake.  Both Sarah and Whitney came down with the stomach flu, so we were up most of the night cleaning up throw up (which of course further aggravated Michael and Brooklyn's night time antics).  Spencer slept through the whole thing.

By Friday morning both Liz and I had also come down with the stomach flu, so we tried to spend the day recovering as much as we could.  November is a big birthday month for the Bellamy's so we were supposed to have a big birthday party at Liz's parents house that afternoon, but on account of the illness we moved it to Liz's sister's house.  Our children were so disappointed they were too sick to attend, they had really been looking forward to it.

Fortunately it turned out to be only a 24-hour bug, so by Saturday our family was mostly feeling better, just in time for family pictures.  But unfortunately, by this time the flu had spread to some of their cousins, so we couldn't get everyone together for family pictures.  We got as many family members together as we could, and we're hoping the magic of photoshop will make it appear as though everyone was there.

We drove back to Colorado Saturday afternoon after taking family pictures.  We were really fortunate to have excellent weather so the trip went smoothly.  We arrived home just in time for Brooklyn to come down with the stomach flu on Sunday afternoon.  Better watch out, Spencer!

Our last night in Utah we put the three oldest kids on the couches in the family room, gave Michael his own room, and had Brooklyn in our room.  It was by far our best night of the trip, as we only had to get up every 1-2 hours with Brooklyn. After three nights without sleep, boy are we ever glad to be home from our vacation so we can finally get some rest! :-)

It was two years ago at Thanksgiving that we took this picture of Michael:

We felt that it really captures his enthusiasm for life, so it has been the cover photo for our blog for a long time now.  It was a week or so after taking this photo that he started experiencing mysterious symptoms that led to his cancer diagnosis a month later.  At this Thanksgiving time we are so grateful that Michael has survived and thrived and is still here with us today.  We are so grateful for doctors, family, friends, and even strangers who have helped us and continue to help us through the daily struggle that has become the new normal in our lives.  And we are especially grateful to the Lord who has blessed us with five wonderful children and who continues to watch over and bless our family each and every day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Eye eye, Cap'n!

This week one of Michael's speech therapists brought us a talking device to try out with Michael.  Each button has a picture or word associated with it.  The idea is that when he wants something, he pushes the button for it and you hear one of our pre-recorded voices say the word or phrase associated it.  Things like "milk", "snack", "hug", or his favorite, "all done".  Spencer recorded that one and the kids still burst into giggles every time we hear his four-year old voice belt out "I'm...all...DONE!!!".

Michael's new talking machine.  We still need more pictures to go with the buttons.

Early on Friday morning I took Michael into the hospital for eye surgery to help correct his strabismus.  It has been almost a year since his previous eye surgery, and his eye surgeon said that statistically speaking this should be his last.  We're grateful that once again we could do the surgery here in Fort Collins instead of traveling down to Denver.  Liz stayed home with the other kids to help get them off to school and to keep Brooklyn well fed.

Michael's surgery went very well.  Since I wasn't allowed to go with him into the OR to help put him to sleep, the nurses him a little Versed to relax him and make parting with dad easier on him.  (Shouldn't they have something to give to dads as well?!)  An hour or so later the surgery was finished.  An hour or two after that we got to come home.  He handled the whole ordeal like a champ and didn't even cry very much.

His eye is very red and occasionally has bloody tears coming from it.  He's had a fever today and has been feeling kind of crummy.  (He's been saying "I'm...all...DONE!!!" a lot lately.)  But he should be feeling better in a few days.

Chilling out in his PJ's after getting home from surgery

We saw our first significant snowfall this week.  Only a few inches worth, which (shockingly enough) they didn't cancel school for, much to our children's chagrin.  Hopefully the weather will be nice this week as we drive out to Utah to spend Thanksgiving with the Bellamy family!

Sarah and Whitney arriving home from school

Time for some hot chocolate by a warm fireplace!

Babbling Brooke and Marching Michael

Brooke is four months old now and is as cute as ever.  She smiles brightly when someone is paying attention to her and gets upset when she's being ignored.  Not sure if it's a princess complex or the youngest child syndrome (it's probably both).  Fortunately she has lots of older siblings who love to give her attention.  Especially Spencer.  He's always making weird noises and pulling silly faces to try to get her to smile.  Liz and I laugh when we see his antics and comment, "Boy, it starts early, doesn't it?  The things a boy will do to try to get a girl's attention!"

Brooke is still up at night a lot.  Sometimes it's for social reasons and just wants someone to pay attention to her, but usually it's because she's hungry.  We eagerly awaited her four month birthday so we could start giving her solid foods with the hope that it would help her sleep better at night.  Unfortunately she has a really bad gag reflex, which is especially pronounced when we try to feed her rice cereal.  So if we're lucky we can get her to swallow a few tiny spoonfuls, otherwise it sometimes causes her to throw up everything in her tummy.

One of Michael's speech therapists works with a lot of children with bad gag reflexes and suggested we use one of the tools we've been using for Michael to help Brooke.  The tool looks like a lollipop, it's a white stick with a star-shaped sponge on the end.  You stick it in the child's mouth and twirl it and swab it around to help wake up the mouth.  The hope is that if we can wake up Brooke's mouth before she eats she won't gag so much.  The jury is still out on it, but we hope it will help.

Michael has a shiny new walker now, which he seems to like.  It has several features we can adjust as he gains strength and coordination.  He's still not strong enough to do much with it, but we're hoping that over time it will help him learn to walk on his own.  It has a strap around his waist to help keep him from falling down.  We usually keep the back wheels locked so that he can't roll backwards, he can only move forwards.  Of course, that means when he bumps into things he's stuck and needs help.  The front is open so that he can walk over to something and interact with it with his hands without having a big bar in front of him blocking his reach.

Michael's eyes are starting to have a hard time keeping straight again, which means one eye or the other will sometimes quit working.  So he's going in for another eye surgery on November 22 to try to correct the problem.  Fortunately we can do the surgery here in Fort Collins instead of driving down to Denver.

Sweet Sarah

Sarah turned eight years old on Friday.  It's hard to believe she's growing up so fast!

It's our family tradition to come into the bedroom of the sleeping birthday child and sing Happy Birthday to get them out of bed.  Of course, Sarah had been awake and bouncing around the house for hours beforehand with anticipation.  But she still wanted us to sing to her to get her up, so when it was time she ran back into her room and dutifully pulled the covers up over herself, then acted surprised when we came into her room singing Happy Birthday to her.

She opened her presents before breakfast and her siblings and parents did her morning chores for her.  It was a school day, but Liz and I took her out of school for lunch and treated her to Hu Hot, which is a fun Mongolian grill where they cook the food in front of you and rate the spiciness of the food on a scale of 0 to 5 burning villages.

After school we threw a birthday party for Sarah and invited a bunch of her friends over for pizza, pinata, presents, cake and ice cream, and a fairy movie.  It was with no small amount of trepidation that we invited such a large group of eight year old girls to our house, but they were remarkably well-behaved (as were our own children!) and they all had a great time.

Halloween

Lately we haven't been able to stay on top of even the basics, let alone find time to update our blog!  At four months old, Brooke is still sleeping like a newborn, and is often up 4-5 times a night.  She and Michael often won't nap at the same time in the afternoon either, so poor Liz is running on fumes.  (If you're thinking about all the diapers, yes, those fumes too.) :-)

Michael's and Brooklyn's needs are really intense right now, and we're still trying to squeeze in time for our three older kids as well.   So much has happened in the last few months, so I'd like to take the extra hour we get at the end of daylights savings time to capture a few of them.

Michael and Brooklyn sure are a handful but they're starting to grow fond of each other.  The other day I watched the cutest thing as Brooklyn was lying on the floor and Michael crawled over and tried to give her a kiss.

When I was a kid, Halloween was one day a year where we dressed up in our costumes and went trick-or-treating at night.  This year our kids had at least five or six events throughout October where they got dressed up and that involved treats and candy.  And even though we have tons of dress up clothes, they always wanted to wear something ELSE for Halloween! 

We had a great Halloween this year, the kids are getting old enough to really start getting into it.  Here are a few of their creative decorations they came up with.

Spiders hanging down from the ceiling

Our house is now officially haunted by "Frank Einstien" (any relation to Albert?)

One evening a few weeks ago, we had a mysterious friend visit us for dinner.  She told us it was unfortunate that Whitney wouldn't be able to join us, but she assured us that she was Whitney's friend and that it was okay with Whitney that she have dinner with us.  We had never met her before and haven't seen her since.  We've also never seen her and Whitney together.  But she was a delightful dinner guest and she let us take her picture before she left.

One of our October traditions is eating dinner in a pumpkin.  We had the missionaries over for dinner the night we served it, so they were able to share in our tradition.

Liz took the kids to Utah for a few days when they were out of school.  The Bellamys are big into holidays and have a legendary annual Halloween party at their house.  This was the first time our kids were able to attend and they had a blast!

All dressed up for the Bellamy Halloween party!

Unfortunately I had to stay behind and work, in more than one sense of the word.  Some of the main rooms in our new house don't have any overhead lights, so I remedied the situation in our living room.  I was able to route most of the electrical wiring behind our crown molding.  The room was a complete mess for a few days and I couldn't even blame it on the kids.

We had a Halloween party at church about a week before Halloween.  Zach Gormley is one of the top yo-yo champions in the world and happens to go to our church so he wowed us with his talent at the Halloween party.  What an amazing teenager!  At the end of the Halloween party the kids went trunk-or-treating by gathering candy from cars in the parking lot (unless the car was owned by one of the many dentists and orthodontists in our ward, in which case they got pencils or stickers.) :-)
 

Brooke's first Halloween!

All dressed up for the church Halloween party

When the kids started getting low on candy from trunk-or-treating, we knew it was time for Halloween day to finally arrive.  The kids had another Halloween party at school, followed by trick-or-treating at Intel where their daddy works, followed by another round of candy gathering in the neighborhood that night.  Our new neighborhood has lots of families with kids, so we had plenty of trick-or-treaters at our house as well.

Spencer has really been into spiderman lately.  Towards the end of October he mostly rotated between wearing his spiderman pajamas and this spiderman costume.

In case we didn't already have enough candy, let's go trick-or-treating one more time!

Heat Day

On Friday our school district declared a "heat day" so all the schools in the district were cancelled.  Never heard of a heat day?  Neither had we.  Apparently only a handful of schools in the district have air conditioning.  Zach, which is the school our kids go to, is one of them.  But with unseasonably warm temperatures in the forecast (not to mention a 3-day weekend soon to be 4-day weekend *cough*) the district decided to close ALL the schools in the district, regardless of whether they have A/C or fans the teachers can bring in from home.  Strange.

Michael had the cast removed from his leg on Friday.  Yea!!!  Of course, since school was cancelled that day Liz got to take all five of our kids in for his appointment.  Other than a giant sore on his ankle, he doesn't seem any worse for the wear.  He's starting to get more interested in walking, so his physical therapist ordered him a special walker.  We're borrowing one he can use in the meantime.

One year later

It was a year ago this month that Michael finished his grueling cancer treatments.  His cancer was so aggressive there were times we wondered if the treatments were even making a difference.  Today he went down to Children's Hospital for another MRI, his fourth since he finished radiation.  We were thrilled to learn it was another clean scan!  It's nothing short of a miracle that his cancer hasn't returned, and that we get to enjoy four more months with him until his next scan!

One year later and I'm still cancer free!

We're in our new house!

The last few months have been absolutely intense!   Here are a couple of highlights.

After Brooklyn was born we spent the next few weeks taking care of our newborn and packing up our house in preparation for our move.  Liz's parents and sister Julie came out to help.  We also celebrated Michael's second birthday on July 2nd.  Last year at this time we didn't know if he would even have another birthday, so it was awesome celebrating another birthday with him!

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We closed on our new house on July 12th and spent the next week with Liz's parents working on a few pre-move-in house projects and doing more packing.  That Saturday a group of friends and neighbors helped us transport two Uhaul truckloads to the new house.  We saved some of the really heavy items such as our piano, some dressers, couches, etc. for the professional movers, who came a few days later.

 

Liz's parents took our three oldest children with them back to Utah on the day of our move.  They enjoyed having a week to play with their Bellamy cousins while we moved to our new house and started the unpacking process.  We drove to Utah the following weekend to pick up our kids and for Brooklyn's baby blessing.  Brooklyn looked like an angel in her blessing dress.

 

One evening while we were in Utah, Michael was playing on Grandma and Grandpa's bed and tumbled off it.  With his poor balance he's already prone to falls.  We protect him the best we can while still letting him explore and develop, and fortunately none of his falls have been serious.  But after this particular fall Michael just wanted to be held all the time, cried a lot, didn't want to sit up, crawl, or do much of anything.  We couldn't figure out what was wrong until a day or two later as we were preparing to drive back to Colorado, we noticed he wouldn't put weight on one of his legs.  That night after arriving home we took him to the ER, and sure enough he had a broken leg!  It's not a bad break, so the ER doctor put a splint on it and referred us to an orthopedic surgeon.  The surgeon, Dr. Baer, happens to be one of our friendly new neighbors we had just recently met, and he put a nice waterproof cast on Michael's leg.

Interestingly enough, Michael's physical therapist has wanted to put weights on Michael's right leg to help him with learning how to walk.  The cast has fit the bill nicely and has been a blessing in disguise in that regard.

My parents drove out to Utah from California for Brooklyn's baby blessing and caravan-ed with us back to Colorado to spend the week with us.  It was great spending time with them and their help was invaluable as we worked on more house projects, unpacking, cleaning out our old house, moving the rest of our stuff over to the new house, taking care of the demands of five young children, and so on.

In the midst of all this moving, Whitney and I celebrated our birthdays as well.  It's a real treat sharing a birthday.  I took Whitney on a special birthday date and asked her where she wanted to go for it.  None of the options I presented sounded all that appealing to her, such as Fort Fun (miniature golf, arcades, etc.), bowling, and the like.  But when I suggested taking her to McDonald's where she could order anything she wanted, her whole face lit up and she was sold!

On August 14 we closed on our old house on Willow Creek Drive.  What a bittersweet moment it was for us.  I bought that house 12 years ago as a single bachelor.  I proposed to Liz in that house and together we brought five children to that beautiful home.  We spent many years making memories and getting the house just the way we wanted it.  But we were bursting at the seams and it was time to find a bigger home.  The family who bought the house from us has two children, a girl and a boy.  When we met the husband and wife on our closing date, they seemed absolutely delightful.  They even brought a baby gift for our little Brooklyn.  As sad as we are to leave our beautiful home, we're so glad that it's going to a wonderful family.

Even though we now live in a new neighborhood, we had originally planned to keep our kids at Liberty Common School.  Liberty is an amazing school and has been so good for our family these last two years.  But as we looked at the logistics of a longer drive to and from school on top of an already packed schedule, we decided to give the local neighborhood school a try.  We've heard a lot of great things about Zach Elementary, and like Liberty it's considered one of the top schools in the Fort Collins area.  The bus stop is on our street, so commuting won't be a problem.  So we're sad to leave Liberty, but hope that Zach will be the right fit for our family at this time.

First day of school!

Michael had a multi-disciplinary clinic at Children's Hospital a week or so ago.  That's where doctors and surgeons from many different fields related to Michael's illness meet with him to see how he's progressing and decide on his next steps.  The clinic was long and Michael has a lot of challenges ahead of him, but overall it went about as well as expected.  Michael's next MRI is this Friday.  We're praying for another clean scan!

The last few months have been absolutely exhausting and we sometimes wonder if we're ever going to come up for air!  Our kids have needed a lot of attention to help them get through this transition.  Poor Michael would scream and cry for up to nine hours a day, and who could blame him?  Bringing home a baby from the hospital and moving to a new house completely rocked his two-year old world.  On top of that Brooklyn is going through a really fussy period right now.  The combination of just those two kids has made it tough to get much done, including sleep!  Our three oldest children are adapting to the changes in their own ways, and we try to find the bandwidth to give them as much love and support as we can.  We don't know why we have felt impressed to make so many big changes at this time in our lives.  We feel completely overwhelmed, but we've seen the Lord's hand in our lives a lot lately, helping us, guiding us, and reassuring us.

Brooklyn Renee

Wow, what a week!

The three older kids participated in a soccer camp in the mornings so I could spend my "overdue" week resting and getting a few things done.  There weren't any major signs the baby was coming until Wednesday morning when some mild contractions started.  Wednesday afternoon we had a home inspector coming over so we had spent Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning getting the house spotless. I got up from resting through my contractions in the afternoon and found the kids had gotten bored of the movie they were watching, and had "forgotten" to not mess up the house.  There was powdered sugar all over the floor in the kitchen, toys strewn everywhere, the fridge raided and food left out, and the kids had set up an elaborate pretend play.  Just then, the doorbell rang - the home inspector had arrived 30 minutes early!  Tim just happened to call home to see how everything was going right at that moment.  I was in a bit of a panic  - early home inspector, messy house, sleeping Michael, in labor... thankfully we managed to get everything cleaned up while the inspector was outside.  It was 103 degrees outside so we headed to the library so I wouldn't melt in the heat.  Tim had left work to come help me and met us there and then we took the kids out for pizza afterwards.  During dinner my contractions started coming less that 5 minutes apart, so we headed home, found a babysitter for the night and took off for the hosptial.  The labor and delivery was different from our other four kids and went really well.  The best part was the doctor sprinting into the room and nearly missing the delivery as things at the end went really quickly.  Our little girl was born at 1:41 AM on Thursday, June 27.  She weighed just shy of 8 pounds and is 20 1/2 inches long.  She's our second smallest baby (Sarah still holding the reigns as our smallest) and has a ton of dark hair.  She definitely looks like she belongs to our family!  We named her Brooklyn Renee and call her "Brooke" for short. 

Late Thursday afternoon Tim brought the kids to the hospital to meet their new sister.  Sarah and Whitney immediately were doting on her, Spencer had to feel my belly several times to make sure there wasn't a baby in there anymore, and Michael - well, the minute he saw Tim holding our new little girl, he started crying and screaming.  It was like he was saying, "What?!  Mom and Dad, you traitors!"  He was practically inconsolible the entire time we were there, but we did manage to get a picture with him and Brooke.  I had two dear friends come to the hospital at the same time as the family and one of them had a camera and caught some priceless images of our family.  The noise in the room was deafening - the kids started having a pillow fight, Michael was howling in misery, and the grown-ups were trying to talk.  It was the perfect moment of the pure chaos of our new family.

We are now home from the hospital (oh, there's no place like home!) and spending our time recovering.  The best part when I arrived home was Michael putting his hands on his lips to try and close them and say, "Mmah" for "Mom."  He then saw the baby in Tim's arms and signed "Baby."  He's much more content today with the baby.  The kids are exhausted from finishing up soccer camp and art class.  I think we will be laying low for the next several days. 

Dr. Kozak made it to the delivery room just in time to deliver Brooklyn

Wow...check this place out!

Happy and content

Proud parents

Mom needs a bigger hospital bed

Pillow fight!

Sarah and Brooklyn

Whitney and Brooklyn

Spencer and Brooklyn

Michael and Brooklyn

Poor Mikey is no longer the baby in the family