Finally!

So last Thursday I finally had my kidney stones blasted! It took a long time to get it done because there were some issues with the urologist who originally helped me and I had to switch doctors, which means more wait time. So to make a long story short- it's finally taken care of. I am feeling a lot better now and just waiting to get the results of what type of stone it is- so I know what, if any, dietary changes I need to make to avoid this in the future. However, kidney stones are extremely common in my family, and so there may be nothing I can do to avoid them except try to drink a lot of water. Ughhhh! So to make this entry more pleasant, I have included Madelynn's cute outfit and our Christmas tree :)

My sister picked this outfit out for Madelynn and I love it because the jean pant legs are only like 8 inches long and she looks so hip. I wish this shirt came in my size.

This is our first Christmas tree! Every year we have traveled to either Chris' or my parents' house so we have never set up a tree. It's really pretty when the fire is also going.

Where did November Go?

We have had such a fun and busy November that it went by so fast! Madelynn is now 5 weeks and just such a sweetie. Grant really loves her and is getting more adjusted to having a new little person in the house. At Madelynn's 10 day pediatric appt. the nurse gave Maddie a poke for her PKU screening, so of course she started crying and Grant shoved the nurse to try and get her to stop "hurting" his sister.

Below Grant told Maddie that he loved her.

Although, 20 minutes later he got really upset about the attention Madelynn was getting. We have had a few instances where he really gets upset that she is getting the attention.

He likes to act like a baby sometimes too. I have found him sucking on her pacifiers and fake crying- because when she cries, she gets picked up and attended to.

Madelynn has started smiling, but I haven't caught any really good, awake "gummers" yet. But she is a very happy and snuggly baby. Here is one of her sleepy gummers.

She loves to look at lights.

Below is a picture of Grant at about the same age.

Not sure if she is about to cry or smile.

Maddie with Great Grandma Noyes

My happy parents came for Thanksgiving and Madelynn's baby blessing. In the background you can see an awesome teepee that my mom made for Grant!

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house and really had a nice time. I forgot to take pictures with people at our party, I promise we had family over. I do feel bad for Chris though, he got the stomache flu that morningy and so he stayed in the back all day and didn't feel good enough to eat anything. By the time he was feeling better all the leftovers were gone. Sorry sweetie, I'll make you a mini turkey sometime soon :)

Baby Pics!

We are really enjoying our little girl! She is such a sweetie.

One proud papa!

Grant used Rogaine longer than suggested. He loved his Halloween costume and was eager to wear it to the hospital.

My mom came into town to help out. We really enjoyed her visit! Madelynn is the 8th grandbaby for my parents.

Fall Festivities!

Two weeks ago we decided to go to a local pumpkin patch. We had a lot of fun picking out our pumpkins and Grant enjoyed the festive perks they had.

Grant enjoyed the wheelbarrow ride to and from the pumpkin patch.

He seemed very pleased to be involved in the pumpkin-picking process.

Da' boys.

Here's a post-pumpkin-pickin'-pic. It seems that it's getting hard to have a picture of Grant with him both smiling AND looking at the camera, so we happily take what we can get. :)

Chris was trying to get Grant to look at the camera, but we were on a hay ride being pulled by a tractor. Tractor + trailer = 2 of Grant's favorite things, so it was difficult to get him to focus on the camera.

Me and Grant painting Grant's "little pumpkin" as he called it. :)

Grant has been very interested in Monsters, Inc. recently, and Mike Wazowski in particular (if you don't know who Mike Wazowski is, we highly recommend reviewing the movie!). So Grant and I painted his little pumpkin in Mike's face, and Chris carved our big "for real" pumpkin into Mike's body. This was Chris's first attempt with the shaving technique for pumpkin carving and we think it was a good success, so everyone can look forward to a more complex design for next year!

Welcome, Madelynn Grace!

KaraLee and I are pleased to announce the birth of our brand new baby girl, Madelynn Grace Anderson! She was born at 3:12 pm on Friday, October 30, weighing in at a very healthy 7 lbs. 5 oz. and 19.5 inches long. If you've been following along with us through this pregnancy, you know what a blessing it is for us to have this beautiful, healthy, strong little girl arrive in a relatively uneventful manner. We'll pleased to report that KaraLee and Maddie are doing great tonight!

Here are a couple pictures of our little beauty taken shortly after her birth. As many of you probably are aware, KaraLee has been battling kidney stones for the past few weeks. We'll post some family pictures, as well as a report on the kidney stones, after the stones have been resolved. Welcome Baby Maddie!!

Pre-delivery KaraLee (this is actually the room she labored and delivered in - I know, it's historic)

Our beautiful little lady. :) I'm just now realizing that most of the pictures I took of her today are probably not "blog appropriate". We'll provide more pictures in our next post. Hooray for baby girls!

Update and Gratitude!

Thank you to everyone for your kind words and thoughts and for keeping me in your prayers! I really appreciate it! For those of you interested, the procedure in my back was called Nephrostomy Drainage. I won't explain it anymore, but if you're really interested you can google it :). Also, in case any of you are wondering... bladder and kidney related infections/problems can lead to pre-term labor, so twice while I was in the hospital I started contracting more than what was ideal, so I was given two separate shots in the arm (of something that started with a T ) to stop the labor contractions. I was only 33 weeks and a few days when I started having early contractions. so I'm grateful the baby decided to hold off coming.

I also wanted to give a big thanks post for my sweet husband Chris! Chris is my everything- he is perfect for me and I am so grateful everyday that he's mine forever. He has been so supportive during this whole ordeal and really made me feel so loved- especially when I felt my worse. He was a single dad for 1 week and I know how hard it can be to watch a busy boy without another spouse (also, thank you again to Kathy and Craig for watching Grant and feeding Chris and Grant, so that I didn't have to worry as much.) He arranged babysitting to come visit me in the hospital, even when I was just dozing in and out and he also brought Grant in a couple of times, which can be challenging- but I was grateful because I missed them both so much!

I love you Chris, Thank you, Thank you!

Health Update

Hello Everyone,

So for the past couple of weeks I've been feeling a little yucky and I've had some back pain. So on Friday, Spet 18 I saw my midwives and they said there wasn't anything serious going on.

Then on Sat, 19th, I was at Super Saturday making some fun crafts and I got a super sharp pain in my right side. I tried walking it off, I asked some other ladies who were there for some Tylenol, but nothing seemed to work. So finally, I called the midwife and she said the baby probably just kicked me and I had strained ligament. Then I started throwing up and the pain was unbearable. So I called again and they told me to come into triage. Chris and I went in around 9pm and I was admitted. After some tests we found out that I have kidney stones! AHHHH! This has to be one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. So they gave me a shot of morphine and I felt a lot better.

However, since I'm pregnant, it's too dangerous to expedite the stone passing process, I have to pass them on my own. So I was admitted to the hospital where I was hooked up to an IV (pain medicine and fluids) to help pass the stone. But after a couple of days of no stone, they realized the stone in my kidney wasn't going to come out because it is 9mm (almost 1 cm big!) so it is way to big to pass naturally. So after being in the hospital for 4 days I had a procedure done where they put a tube in my kidney to drain the fluid that can't pass to the ureter (I know this way too much info, but I'm going to share it anyway). So I have to carry a little bag of draining fluid around with me until I have the baby and then we can blast the stone out. I won't be discharged until Friday morning. I hope that I will be able to handle being home and make the best of this situation.

This has been one of the most trying experiences of my life, but I am so grateful for the loving people in my life who have supported me and showed me how much they care! Chris's parents have been heaven sent- they have watched Grant everyday so that Chris can come visit me or go to work. They have also had Chris over to dinner so that he doesn't have to worry about cooking. I am so grateful for my family and friends who have prayed for me and called to check up on me! I have come closer to my Heavenly Father through this experience because I have needed the prayers to get me through the pain and feeling of being stuck in a bed for days. I now have more empathy for others who have experienced pain like this or have had to be hospitalized for several days. I hope that when I am feeling better that I can give the love and support to those around me who are experiencing a trying medical situation.

Thank you to everyone for your prayers, emails, phone calls, and love!

Thank you, Thank you!

KaraLee

And He's Only 2 years Old!

Grant has started talking so much! I can't believe some of the things he says- they crack me up!
The other day we were at Target in the make-up section and Grant was sitting in the cart. There was a girl about 20 years old also looking at make-up. All of the sudden Grant says with a big grin...

"Hi girl. Grant like Clifford, big red dog."

She smiled at him and said, "Oh I like Clifford too."

Grant smiled at her and then said, "Name Grant."

She grins, we walk away, and he says, "Bye, bye!"

What a flirt. He's cute, but he doesn't realize that he won't get any phone numbers because he still wears diapers and doesn't have a job.

I love my funny little boy!

Back to Nature!

One of my favorite things to do is berry picking! And lately I have been doing that a lot. I went Blackberry picking twice (they literally grow like weeds around here- so they're free!) and I went blueberry picking. Our house also has two apple trees that produced some apples so I took advantage of those too! I feel kind of domestic because I made freezer jam with the blackberries and froze the blackberries and apple slices for future goodies! Although, I don't think freezing makes the best food storage because if our power went out we'd be sunk. Oh well. At least we can make blueberry muffins and apple crisp until that happens- knock on wood.

Since we've been enjoying the fruits of nature :), we thought it would be fun to go "camping". So we set up our tent in the backyard. Grant had a blast, but we only ended up "sleeping" in the tent for about 45 min. because the air mattress went flat. I know we're not very tough, but when your 7 months pregnant and you know there is a nice comfy bed 50 feet away- why sleep on the ground? So we "camped" on our bed. Since Grant doesn't know what camping is- he thought what we did was still super fun.

Grant thought running around in the tent was the best.

Grant's New Bed

My husband is awesome! Chris thought it would be fun to build something out of wood :). So we decided it would be the most practical to make Grant a bed- since his mattress has just been sitting on the floor. Chris didn't make this bed from a kit- he actually went to the lumber store, picked out all of the wood and then cut it to size! The bed will eventually have a headboard, but I have been picky about which style I like best :).

I'm proud of you Chris! Great Job!!!

Grant is super excited about his bed (although not enough to sleep in it through the night.)

The bed has three pull out drawers, which is awesome because right now Grant doesn't have enough space in his dresser drawers.

Yellowstone Fun!

Chris finished the Washington State Bar on July 30th!! (Results will be in around the middle of October.) Congrats sweetie, I'm so proud of you! So to celebrate and get away from the heat (inside our house it was constantly around 85 degrees- yuck!) we packed up and drove to Yellowstone!

My sweet grandparents have a cabin that they built in Island Park and they were kind enough to let us stay there for a week.

Here are my sweet grandparents! We spent a couple days with them in Idaho Falls. Grant loved spending time with his great-grandparents- he made quick friends!

One of Grant's favorite pasttimes is throwing rocks into any body of water. So we pulled off the road to throw rocks into Firehole River in YStone. Grant was impressed with this "Really Big Rock!"

A post-rock- throw observation.

This is a garbage can after it was tested for "Bear Proofing". I'm not a scientist, but I don't think it passed.

Grant loves to ask Chris and I to follow him. Here is he directing Chris where to go next.

We went to a Bear and Wolf Reserve, but I think Grant had more fun playing on the playground.

Although, he did enjoy hiding out in the Wolf's den.

One of my favorite spots is the Grand Canyon on Yellowstone! Absolutlely amazing!

Another shot of the canyon.

Grant thought the waterfall was cool, but was more interested in throwing rocks through the fence.

(Just an FYI- I'm 6 months along in these pics)

Smiling eventhough he practically lived in a car for a week! What a good boy!

We didn't see as many animals in the park, as we have in the past. But we were satisfied when this Bull Elk walked in front of our car. I was taking a picture with my window rolled down, but I quickly rolled it up as the Elk got closer to the car.

At the cabin, we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows! Yum!!!

Summer Time Fun!

My sweet Grandma Noyes wanted to get Grant something special for his birthday, so she bought him this awesome kiddie pool.

Last weekend, Chris' brothers, Jeff and Stephen, came into town for the 4th. While they were here we decided to go for a hike up to Franklin Falls.